Introduction

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Abstract
Extraordinary fossils are so firstly because they reveal the morphology of soft non-mineralized parts of plants and animals. We marvel at what is preserved, and ask questions about the organisms, their ecology and evolutionary relationships. While these fossils are rightly regarded as exceptional, any particular biota is not therefore unrepresentative, a curio of no general or geological significance (Zangerl 1971). On the contrary, the biota may be more representative of an original community than the remnant assemblage of hard parts we get under more usual geological conditions. Soft-bodied animals dominate modern marine faunas, and may well have done so since the Precambrian. Fossil Lagerstatten in which such animals are preserved provide unique insights into past communities.

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