On May 27th, 2010 paleontologists Martin Smith and Jean-Bernard Caron announced that they had found a spectacular solution to one of the fossil record’s long-running mysteries. Since its description in 1976, the 505 million year old fossil Nectocaris pteryx from British Columbia’s famous Burgess Shale had vexed scientists. Known from a single specimen – appearing as little more than a smear on a rock slab – this creature seemed to be equal parts chordate and arthropod. No one could say what it was. Thanks to the discovery of nearly 100 additional specimens, however, this Cambrian oddball could finally be reexamined and its affinities resolved. In the pages of Nature, Smith and Caron presented Nectocaris as the early, Cambrian cousin of