Castle Bank

[1] When 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns prevented Llandrindod residents and researchers for Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, Joe Botting and Lucy Muir, from travelling, they reinvestigated a site they had discovered a decade earlier in a nearby sheep field.

So far, 170 species have been found, among them more than 30 panarthropods and what resembles a marine relative of insects.

Many forms that have been found in the Castle Bank deposit are of animals who had gone through a miniaturization trend when compared to Cambrian animals found among the Burgess Shale fossils, making the biota in the Castle Bank deposit more similar to modern faunas.

Nonetheless, the fossils are exceptionally well preserved, with details as small as 10 μm often being visible, including tiny limbs, digestive systems, nerves, and filter-feeding tentacles.

Such details also exist among certain Cambrian fossils, but have been absent from Ordovician finds that have been discovered to date.