Newly found Chinese fossils from 518 million years ago show explosion of life.
Much of what scientists know about the Cambrian explosion started with the 508 million-year-old site known as the Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909 in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which exquisitely preserved fossils of many soft body parts, including skin, eyes, guts and brains.
Now scientists have revealed new Cambrian fossils from China that not only rival the quality and diversity of fossils at the Burgess Shale, but also reveal an unexpectedly large number of previously unknown species from the Cambrian explosion. Of the 101 animal species identified from the Qingjiang biota so far, more than 50 were previously unknown to science. Moreover, "the fossils are really exceptionally preserved, including soft tissues that you don't normally see in the fossil record," said paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, who did not take part in this research. "It's basically a new window to the Cambrian world.
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