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Marella
Some 500 million years ago, the tiny shrimplike creature Marella darted around the seafloor, beating its 50 feathery legs as it swam in search of dead animals to eat.
Marella appeared in the Cambrian Explosion, when a vast range of animal life evolved in a short space of time.

Marella's head was protected by a large and possibly colorful shield with four long backward-pointing spikes.
Under the shield was Marella's flexible body, which consisted of 25 segments, each with a pair of feathery legs that doubled as gills for breathing underwater.
Attached to the head were two pairs of long, flexible antennae (feelers).
Marella was one of the first arthropods, the group that today includes insects, spiders and other animals with external skeletons.

Studies of Marella fossils suggest that its surface was iridescent, meaning that it had a colorful sheen that glinted and changed color as the light moved, like the surface of a soap bubble or a butterfly's wings.

More than 15,000 fossils of Marella have been found, all of them at one location in Canada.
The fossils are in a type of rock called shale, formed from seafloor mud.