Qingjiang: a spectacular new Cambrian Lagerstätte from Hubei Province, China

[ceratopsian]

A new Lagerstätte found on the banks of the Danshui river, Hubei Province, has just been announced.  The preservation is stunning and it presents many new taxa not known from the Burgess Shales or the Chengjiang biota.

Here's a link to a newspaper article (one of many available):

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/21/mindblowing-haul-of-fossils-over-500m-years-old-unearthed-in-china

The article is here but paywalled, though you can read the abstract:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6433/1284

[Libraraptor]

This is a sensation!  Plays in the same league as Messel or the  Burgess Shale for example.

[ceratopsian]

This is a sensation!  Plays in the same league as Messel or the  Burgess Shale for example.

Absolutely!  A breathtaking discovery with a lot more to come in the future.

[Halichoeres]

This is such a cool discovery. If anybody wants a pdf, I can help you out.

Also, this article has some more photos to feast your eyes on:

https://www.sciencealert.com/an-incredibly-rare-cambrian-fossil-discovery-is-filling-in-our-evolutionary-gaps

[Faelrin]

Wow another amazing discovery, especially since over 50% of it is specimens new to science (along with filling out some crucial fossil gaps). I'm pretty familiar with the fauna from the Burgess Shale (if in part from the many figures of them, Walking With Monsters, and the Burgess Shale website showcasing how diverse the fauna and fossils were, etc), but not much from this period outside of that. This might change that now, in time. The images are absolutely astounding too (edit: no doubt the fossils in person, even more so). I'm pretty sure one of those is at least a comb jelly, or at least it looks like one (image C in the science alert article), which is not something I thought I'd ever see fossilized, let alone from so long ago. In any case some of that stuff seems pretty familiar, even if there's so much time between what's here now, and from then. Just breathtaking really.

[Halichoeres]

The part that has me most excited is that they have new remains of vetulicolians. I'd like to see whether the new specimens have anything to say about the hypothesis that they're stem-tunicates.