No large carnivores in Cambrian. Many groups of animals appeared, but few succeeded. In a few places in the world, there are examples of exceptional preservation of soft-bodied marine invertebrates . The Burgess Shale is the most spectacular of these. Its occurrence early in the Cambrian serves to highlight the great diversity and variety of multicellular life at this early point in its history.
Good preservation indicates deposition in anoxic conditions.
Many delicate details of soft part anatomy are preserved. Fossils found in turbidite beds in the Burgess Shale, which were swept off an adjacent, well- oxygenated, carbonate platform by turbidity currents, and killed and protected from decay in anoxic water. More than 120 species. Includes previously unknown phyla. Arthropods, molluscs, echinoderms, coelenterates, onychophorans, priapulid worms, annelids, chordates, sponges.