Henry Gee

These were all offshoots, but a lot of different kind of arthropods became extinct.

They didn't survive the Cambrian.

They maybe lived a bit longer.

But there were also a lot of amazing worms in the Cambrian.

In Cambridge some time ago, the great student of the Burgess Shales was a guy called Harry Whittington.

And his students were Simon Conway Morris, who I mentioned, and also Derek Briggs.

They're both still active.

Derek mostly does the arthropods and Simon did all the worms.

But there are lots of worms.

Now there's an obscure group of worms now called Priapylids, which...

The classically trained listeners of the ancients will titter because it means basically penis worms.

And they look like penises.

And these were major, major players in the fauna digging stuff in the seabed and filtering out gunge from the seabed.

There are not many of them around now, but they still do exist.

But there were many more of them.

back then.

Yes, I'm never quite sure how to pronounce this.

It's Chinese.

Now, the Burgess Shales was, for a long time, the poster boy of these Cambrian deposits, which preserved creatures, including their soft parts, in incredible detail.

A later one was discovered in China, in South China, the Chengjiang Fauna.