Meeting Abstract
The iconic 508 million-year-old Burgess Shale, famous for its exceptional preservation of a diverse community of soft-bodied marine organisms, was key to defining the concept of the Cambrian Explosion as a true biological event, but the interpretation of many of its constituent taxa has had a checkered history. In particular, the role of a number of so-called Problematica in reconstructing early animal evolution has traditionally been difficult to assess. New field discoveries and continuous research have allowed for the revision of many of these problematic forms as stem groups of known clades, including modern phyla, although many questions remain. In this talk, I will provide a survey of recent progress in our understanding of the affinities of several key taxa, in particular, those related to the early evolution of panarthropods.
