Early Cambrian faunas are rich in strange and distinctive fossils that
are difficult to interpret or to classify. The small, conical fossils
assigned to the extinct phylum Agmata, and the arguments surrounding
their affinities and paleoecology, are a classic example of this probl
em. Volborthella are commonly found in Lower Cambrian strata of North
America and in coeval units on the East European platform. These agglu
tinated fossils are traditionally interpreted as the complete skeleton
of individual animals. However, a newly discovered fossil from the Wh
ite-Inyo Mountains of eastern California demonstrates that Volborthell
a was a bilaterally symmetrical animal bearing multiple pairs of conic
al agglutinated sclerites. Volborthella, as traditionally defined, was
one of many sclerites covering a relatively large metazoan, an Early
Cambrian armored worm or mollusklike animal, and is the only known met
azoan with a scleritome composed of agglutinated elements. This discov
ery ends more than a century of misinterpretation of this enigmatic Ea
rly Cambrian fossil.