- Country:Canada
- Collection:Silver Commemorative $20
- Metal:Silver
- Year:2018
- Denomination:$20
- Finish:Complete
- Weight (oz):1.02
- Purity:0.9999
- Mintage:5500
- Product type:Coin
With its curving spines and feathery legs, Marrella splendens has left an unmistakable imprint on our rocks-and on this splash-struck coin. The Cambrian arthropod is practically life-sized, where the aged look of a patina finish complements the series' ancient theme. While the carefully sculpted rock texture is nothing short of stunning, it also adds an extra touch of authenticity to this recreation of a Marrella specimen recovered from the fossil-rich Burgess Shale of Yoho National Park, British Columbia.
Own a coin shaped like an ancient roman coin! Order today!
Special features:
FOURTH COIN IN THE SERIES! The second of two NEW coins added to our Ancient Canada series, which had collectors clamouring formore!
EACH COIN MAY VARY IN SIZE! Struck using an old coin-minting technique,each coin may vary in size: it may be larger or flatter, but it will always have a minimum diameter of 38 mm!
YOUR COIN DOES NOT HAVE A RIM! Instead, your 99.99% pure silver was allowed to "spill" out to give thiscoin a slightly irregular shape-just likean ancient Roman coin!
TIMEWORN LOOK AND FEEL OF FOSSILS EMBEDDED IN SANDSTONE! Verified by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, the design features precision engraving that realistically mimics the timeworn look and feel of fossils embedded in sandstone.
BEAUTIFUL PATINA FINISH! Adding to the engraved textural details, a beautiful patina finish gives the coin an antiqued appearance that reflects the series' theme, while the prehistoric-looking font adds to the "lost in time" feel of it all!
FRAMED PRESENTATION TRANSFORMS THIS INTO ONE-OF-A-KIND WALL ART! The coin's irregular shape means it will not fit in a typical plastic capsule-instead, the coin comes packaged in a ready-to-display floating frame! Measuring 80 mm x 80 mm x 34 mm, the framed presentation transforms this into one-of-a-kind wall art and a sure conversation piece, since the fossils will appear to be "embedded" in your wall!
SEALED IN LACQUER! The antique finish is sealed in lacquer, which should minimize theappearance of fingerprints if the coin is accidentally removed from its frame.
INCLUDES SERIALIZED CERTIFICATE! Regardless of special packaging, the Royal Canadian Mint certifies all of its collector coins! Most of these are serialized certifications, where the certificate included with the coin is given a unique number beginning with 1.
VERY LOW MINTAGE! Set to 5,500 coins worldwide, this limited collectible issure to be highly sought after due to the nature ofits theme and beauty-a must-see/must-have!
ONE-OUNCE 99.99% PURE SILVER COIN! Your coin has no GST/HST!
Design:
Your coin's design is based on fossils curated at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta, and has been reviewed for scientific accuracy by palaeontologists at the Museum. Itfeatures a near life-sized reproduction of Marrella splendens, a marine arthropod from the Middle Cambrian period (505 million years ago), whose curving spines and wedge-shaped head are among its most distinguishing features. A carefully sculpted rock texture fills the field and surrounds the precision-engraved fossils, resulting in a more true-to-life rendering of the Marrella specimen recovered from the Burgess Shale Formation. While the rimless coin's unique shape is the product of an old coin-making technique,the antiqued look of a patina finish adds to the design's "ancient" look and feel, which extends to the prehistoric-looking font on the reverse and obverse. The obverse featuresthe effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II by Susanna Blunt.
Canada: A Cambrian treasure trove
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Burgess Shale is one of the world's most famous Cambrian fossil sites. In fact, the rocks in Yoho National Park date back to one of the most important events in Earth's timeline, the Cambrian Explosion, which saw a "burst" of evolution among multi-cellular organisms-the distant ancestors to today's major animal groups (phyla).
The importance of the Burgess Shale lies within the dark mudstone, which has preserved hundreds of thousands of soft-bodied organisms from the mid-to-late Cambrian Period (505-485 million years ago). This represents an exceptional find, for soft tissue normally decays before fossilization can begin. Buried by mudslides and successive layers of sediment, these specimens were protected by the oxygen-depleted conditions that prevented complete decay; compressed over time and re-discovered in the early 20th century, they have helped fill some of the gaps in our fossil record, and provided us with an extraordinary window to ancient life.
Did you knowÃ
Most of the Burgess Shale specimens of Marrella have been recovered from thePhyllopod bed in the Walcott Quarry, so-named for the palaeontologist who first discovered the fossils in 1909.
While the genus Marrellawas named after a palaeontologist (Dr. John Marr), the species name splendens means "bright" or "brilliant" in Latin-this seems fitting,since evidence indicates Marrella likely had a colourful iridescent sheen to it!
This arthropod was initially described as an unusual trilobite. A later study in the 1970s concluded its antennae were too numerous and leg segments too few forit to be a trilobite (like the Ogygopsis featured on our second Ancient Canada coin). Marrella's legs also differ from crustaceans, which possess three pairs of legs behind the mouth-a defining characteristic that Marrella lacks!
There is no documented evidence that Marrella possessed eyes. Similar to a modern-day crustacean, Marrella likely used its antennae as a sensory organ to locate food in itsmarine ecosystem, where it fed on organic matter inthe water and dredged up from the ocean floor!
