A Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale-Type Fauna from Shandong Province, Eastern China
Diying Huang and Yunan Wang
Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
Soft-bodied Cambrian faunas have a worldwide distribution. Within China, most occur in a wide area of the Yangtze platform, represented by the Chengjiang fauna from Yunnan Province and the Kaili fauna from Guizhou Province. The stratigraphy has been well established in the Early to Middle Cambrian Huabei platform on the basis fragmented trilobites. Few soft-bodied animals have been so far reported from the Huabei platform.
Complete, well-preserved trilobites are abundant in the Middle Cambrian Xuzhuang Formation (Zhangxia Stage), Feixian, Shandong, eastern China, which is near the south margin of Huabei platform. This fauna is preserved in black to greenish shale, and is dominated by the trilobite Maotunia. The trilobites Manchuriella, Changqingia, and Eymekops were also present. Many trilobites were preserved as complete individuals; isolated cephala and pygidia of Pseudoperonopsis occur in several beds. Other soft-bodied animals are present, including sponges, chancelloriids, arthropods (e.g. Isoxys), putative echinoderms, problematica (e.g. Banffia?), and other unidentified fossils. Brachiopods and hyoliths are also very common.
This Burgess Shale-type fauna helps to reveal the diversity, distribution and evolution of soft-bodied animals in the Cambrian.