LOWER CAMBRIAN FOSSIL VOLBORTHELLA - THE WHOLE TRUTH OR JUST A PIECE OF THE BEAST

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.