Exceptional Preservation
All but the smallest fraction of the fossil record consists of the robust skeletal matter of decayed corpses. Hence, since Ediacaran biota had soft bodies and no skeletons, their abundant preservation is surprising. The absence of burrowing creatures living in the sediments undoubtedly helped; since after the evolution of these organisms in the Cambrian, soft-bodied impressions were usually disturbed before they could fossilize.
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