The efforts of labor-intensive collecting in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang deposits in eastern Yunnan Province, China led to the discovery of many horizons containing exceptionally well preserved soft-bodied fossil concentrations, many of which can be assigned to either monospecific concentrations or paucispecific concentrations. The features of these fossil concentrations support the hypothesis that frequent storm events producing tempestites mainly contributed to the preservation of abundant soft- bodied fossils in the Chengjiang deposits, and indi- cate that the balance of the ecological web in this region was probably frequently destroyed or upset by such storm events during that geological time. Ani- mals in a fossil assemblage in such fossil concentra- tions probably occupied similar ecological biotopes.
HAN JianSHU DeganZHANG ZhifeiLIU JianniZHANG XingliangYAO Yang
The rare fossil Miraluolishania described by Liu et al. from the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang Lagersttte in 2004 is regarded as an arthropod sphinx because it bears mosaic features of both lobopods and arthropods. The discovery of this rare transitional form offers direct fossil evidence for exploring the relationship between lobopods and arthropods. However, some scientists consider Miraluolishania to be a junior synonym of Luolishania because the former superficially resembles the latter in general appearance. Considering the significant differences between the two taxa, a thorough comparative study of Miraluolishania and Luolishania leads to the conclusion that there are definitely two different genera. Nevertheless, the "Luolishania" of the Haikou area is indeed "Miraluolishania", whereas Luol-ishania is most likely the typical genus of the Maotianshan area of Chengjiang County.
