Incredibly Preserved Fossils Show How Weird The Sea Was 462 Million Years Ago
Brains, eyes, and digestive organs. Those were just some of the soft tissue surprises waiting for researchers processing 462-million-year-old specimens retrieved from Castle Bank Quarry in Wales, UK. The Castle Bank Community, as the collection of ancient marine oddities is known, demonstrates remarkable diversity as well as preservation, contributing more than 170 new species to science with the help of crowdfunding.
Exceptional specimens such as these are sometimes called Burgess Shale-types after a location in Canada where fossils were found with soft tissues preserved, extending our understanding of the evolution of animal groups. Typically, they’re limited to the Cambrian period that stretched between 541 and 485 million years ago, but on occasion, science is treated to an extra old glut of gorgeous fossils.
That could be said of the Castle Bank Community which dates back to 462 million years ago, landing them in the Middle Ordovician epoch. They are mostly small in size, sitting between 1 to 5 millimeters in total body length (0.04 to 0.2 inches)...
https://www.iflscience.com/incredibly-preserved-fossils-show-how-weird-the-sea-was-462-million-years-ago-68688
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