The late Precambrian tube-forming Cloudina, the earliest known animal to produce a mineralized exoskeleton, shows evidence of having been attacked by shell-boring organisms. Of more than 500 tubes from Shaanxi Province, China, 2.7% have rounded holes 40 to 400 micrometers in diameter. The relation between the size of the holes and the width of the bored tubes suggests that the attacking organism was a predator, selecting its prey for size. If true, this would be the oldest case of predation in the fossil record and would support the hypothesis that selection pressures from predation was a significant factor in the evolution of animal skeletons around the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary.

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The recent discovery of large shells. growing by accretion, in the scleritome of the coeloscleritophoran Halkieria Poulsen, 1967, prompts the reconsideration of a number of cap‐shaped shells in the Lower Cambrian. The scaly shells of Maikhanella Zhegallo, 1982. from Mongolia provide a good starting point, mce they occur together with spicules of siphogonuchitid type and appear to be composed of merged spicules. The shells are phosphatired and consist of two main elements: spicules, typically filled with phosphate. and an intermediate matrix. The associated loose spicules belong to forms that have served as the basis for erection of the genera Siphogonuchites Qian. 1977, and Lopochites Qian, 1977. Maikhanella is prohdbly a junior synonym of one or both of the latter two genera, but taxonomic revision is suspended until the type material of these siphogonuchitid genera has been restudied. and all three genera are left as sciotaxa. Various cap‐shaped shells and plates in the Chinese Meishucunian are reinterpreted as shells belonging to coeloscleritophornn scleritoines. Maikhanella shells were formed through the embedding of spicules in secondary calcareous shell zubstance. The skeletogenesis has several similarities with that of molluscs, and together with the polyplacophoran‐like features of the Halkieria scleritome this forces a reconsideration of the phylogenetic relationships between coeloscleritophorans and molluscs

The cactus-like chancelloriids from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale are revised on the basis of Walcott's (1920) original collections and new material containing several hundred specimens collected by Royal Ontario Museum field expeditions from 1975 to 2000. Walcott's interpretation of chancelloriids as sponges was based on a misinterpretation of the dermal coelosclerites as embedded sponge-type spicules, an interpretation that further led to the lumping of three distinct taxa into one species, Chancelloria eros Walcott, 1920. The other two taxa are herein separated from C. eros and described as Allonnia tintinopsis n.sp. and Archiasterella coriacea n.sp., all belonging to the Family Chancelloriidae Walcott, 1920. Chancelloriids were sedentary animals, anchored to shells or lumps of debris in the muddy bottom, or to sponges, or to other chancelloriids. They had a radially symmetrical body and an apical orifice surrounded by a palisade of modified sclerites. Well-preserved integuments in Al. tintinopsis and Ar. coriacea do not show any ostium-like openings. Neither is there any evidence for internal organs, such as a gut. Partly narrowed specimens suggest that the body periodically contracted from the attached end to expel waste material from the body cavity. Chancelloriids were close in organization to cnidarians but shared the character of coelosclerites with the bilaterian halkieriids and siphogonuchitids. The taxon Coeloscleritophora is most likely paraphyletic.

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