On shale of a very fine grain, the Burgess fossils look like lithographic pictures, dark on light (see color insert plates 15 and 16). Even the soft parts like the gills and guts are sometimes preserved. This is not the norm in the world of paleontology. Usually soft tissues decay before they can be fossilized, leaving behind only harder parts, such as bone, teeth, and shells, to be preserved. The Burgess event that captured the Cambrian fauna for future discovery was different. Although it took the lives of untold Cambrian animals, it did so with an exquisite delicacy that preserved soft
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