It is not easy working on Cambrian fossils. The petrified treasures are found in only a few places in the world, and, even though many exhibit exquisite preservation, they come from a time when life on earth looked very unfamiliar. One creature extracted from the famous Burgess Shale, Anomalocaris, was a three foot long invertebrate that swam by undulating a series of lobes on either side of its body. At the front of its head were two spiked tendrils that may have helped situate prey items to be processed by the camera-shutter arrangement of crushing plates that was its mouth. There is nothing quite like it alive today.

Indeed, Anomalocaris was so unusual that it was misidentified