Collections & Research Staff
Jean-Bernard Caron
Associate Curator
Invertebrate Palaeontology
B.Sc., Earth and Life Sciences, University Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, 1997
M.Sc., Earth Sciences, University Claude-Bernard, Lyon, 1999
Ph.D., Zoology, University of Toronto, 2005
Jean-Bernard Caron is an Associate Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the ROM.
A profound curiosity about fossils during his childhood led Jean-Bernard Caron to collect and curate his own personal fossil collection in his native France. By the age of 10, he knew he wanted to become a professional palaeontologist. As a teenager, he often joined various professional field crews across Europe for summer field expeditions collecting fossils, and the experience gained as a volunteer field assistant led to an invitation from Desmond Collins, then Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the ROM, to join his field crew at the famous Burgess Shale fossil deposit in British Columbia. This was his first visit to Canada, and he returned to the Burgess Shale as a ROM volunteer for the following two summer field seasons.
His Master's thesis dealt with Banffia constricta, one of the most bizarre animals known from the Burgess Shale. This study was followed by a Ph.D. on the taphonomy and paleoecology of the Burgess Shale community. By the end of his Ph.D. project, Jean-Bernard had examined about half the Burgess Shale specimens (more than 70,000 fossils) stored at the ROM, which houses what can now be considered the world’s largest collection of its kind (over 150,000 specimens). After a short Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council post-doctoral fellowship (Government of Canada), he joined the ROM as Associate Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology in early 2006, thus finally fulfilling his long-standing childhood dream.
At present, his main responsibilities are to curate and interpret fossils from the very large ROM Burgess Shale collection. This represents a real Pandora’s Box for science, with many new organisms still to be described. He also studies fossils from other deposits, particularly in China, where there are sites of similar age and quality of preservation. These Burgess Shale-type deposits yield spectacularly preserved soft-bodied organisms. Because of their great age (about half a billion years old), they are of crucial importance for the study of the origins of animal groups during the Cambrian evolutionary radiation.
Recent Publications
| 2009 | Zhao, F., J.-B. Caron, SX Hu, and M. Zhu. "Quantitative analysis of taphofacies and paleocommunities in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstätte." Palaois, 24: 826-839. |
| 2009 | Pettersson, S., L.E. Holmer, and J.B. Caron. "First record of a pediculate linguloid from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale." Acta Zoologica, 89: 1-13. |
| 2009 | Daley, A.C., G.E. Budd, J.-B. Caron, G.D. Edgecombe, and D. Collins. "The Burgess Shale Anomalocaridid Hurdia and its Significance for Early Euarthropod Evolution." Science, 323: 1597-1600. |
| 2008 | Caron, J.B., and D.A. Jackson. "Paleoecology of the Greater Phyllopod Bed Community, Burgess Shale." Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 258(3): 222-256. |
| 2008 | Caron, J.B. "Palaeontology: Ancient worms in armour." Nature, 451(7175): 133-134. |
| 2007 | Vannier, J., J.B. Caron, J.L. Yuan, D. Briggs, D. Collins, Y.L. Zhao, and M.Y. Zhu. "Tuzoia: morphology and lifestyle of a giant bivalved arthropod of the Cambrian seas." Journal of Paleontology, 81(3): 445-471. |
| 2007 | Caron, J.B., A.H. Scheltema, C. Schander, and D.M. Rudkin. "Reply to Butterfield on stem-group 'worms': fossil lophotrochozoans in the Burgess Shale." BioEssays, 29(2): 200-202. |
| 2007 | Conway Morris, S., and J.B. Caron. "Halwaxiids and the Early Evolution of the Lophotrochozoans." Science, 315: 1255-1258. |
| 2006 | Caron, J.B. and D.A. Jackson. "Taphonomy of the greater phyllopod bed community, Burgess Shale." Palaios, 21(5): 451-465. View Cover (PDF) : Canadia from the Burgess Shale © SEPM-2006. |
| 2006 | Caron, J.B., A.H. Scheltema, C. Schander, and D. Rudkin. "A soft-bodied mollusc with radula from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale." Nature, 442(7099): 159-163. |
Publications List ( PDF)
Research Projects
Burgess Shale Research Projects
Galleries
Natural History Highlights - Burgess Shale
ROM Images
Fossils
Primeval Predators™
Buy toy models of the Burgess Shale fossils
Podcasts
Burgess Shale Collection Storage
December 14, 2006
Associate Curator Jean-Bernard Caron takes us behind-the-scenes for a brief peak at the collection storage for the Burgess Shale fossils.
Video Podcast (4 MB, 4m 31s)
Written Transcript (PDF)
Burgess Shale
November 16, 2006
Associate Curator, Jean-Bernard Caron presents an overview of the fossil collection from the Burgess Shale, B.C., highlighting a number of specimens.
Video Podcast (4 MB, 5m 09s)
Written Transcript (PDF)
Academic Links
University of Toronto - Geology Department
University of Toronto - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
ROM News releases
ROM collections reveal 500 million-year-old monster predator
Jean-Bernard Caron describes a new body-armoured species from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale.
Jean-Bernard Caron, David Rudkin and colleagues describe world’s oldest soft-bodied mollusc
Collaborative Project Replicates 565-Million-Year-Old Fossil Surface
Celebrating 100 years of Burgess Shale
Burgess shale in the Media
Shale of the century: mining the rich seam of the Burgess Shale
Burgess Shale Virtual Exhibit
The Burgess Shale: Evolution's Big Bang
Re-examining the Burgess Shale
Related to Hurdia:
Les années lumière: Une semaine riche en découvertes paléontologiques - l'interview a la Radio-Canada
Related to Orthrozanclus:
Dunham, Will. "Spiky oddball prowled ocean half billion years ago." Reuters 2 Mar. 2007
Les années lumière: Fossile révélateur - l'interview a la Radio-Canada
Related to Odontogriphus:
"Fossils reveal world's oldest soft-bodied mollusc."' CBC News 12 July 2006.
Other Links
Yoho National Park
UNESCO World Heritage site
International Conference on the Cambrian Explosion - Banff, Alberta, August 3-7, 2009
(Note: The conference is now over, but click to see abstracts and group picture.)
Daily Planet segment on casting of fossils at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland
Contact Information
Royal Ontario Museum
Department of Natural History
100 Queen's Park
Toronto, ON
M5S 2C6
Tel: 416.586.5593
Fax: 416.586.5553
E-mail: jcaron@rom.on.ca
International Conference on the Cambrian Explosion - Banff, Alberta, August 3 to 7, 2009.
(Note: The conference is now over, but click to see abstracts and group picture.)
More information
Image of Hurdia victoria, ROM 59252. Photo credit: J.-B. Caron.
© AAAS/Science -2009. Reconstruction of Hurdia victoria by Marianne Collins.
Jean-Bernard in his office at the ROM working on his Ph.D. dissertation, 2001. Image courtesy of Peter von Bitter.
Field crew members using sledge hammer and wedges to crack large slabs of fossiliferous rock. Burgess Shale Walcott Quarry in 1998 (left to right: Will Watts, David Slocombe and Jason Thompson), Yoho National Park. Photo credit: J.-B. Caron.
Digging above the Burgess Shale Walcott Quarry in 1998 (left to right: Jean-Bernard Caron, Matt Devereux). Photo credit: D. Collins.
© AAAS/Science -2007. Reconstruction of Orthrozanclus reburrus by Marianne Collins.
