China's wonderful life

摘要

Arthropods are the most abundant creatures on Earth, whatever measure you use. They are important in all ecosystems and most habitats—even the human body with its various mites, fleas and lice. Until recently the fossil record of this arthropod diversity was a bit thin, but the picture is changing swiftly as new fossil arthropods pop out of the rocks every year or so. Thirty years ago, Harry Whittington and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge rekindled interest in the potential of the very early arthropod fossil record. They revealed a three-dimensional picture of astonishing diversity among the extinct arthropods found in the Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rockies. These fossils were from the Mid Cambrian, 520 million years ago.