an active burrower, moving through the sediment after prey, and is believed to have lived within a U-shaped burrow that it constructed in the substrate. From that place of relative safety, it could extend its proboscis in search of prey. Gut contents show that this worm was a predator, often feasting on the hyolithid Haplophrentis (a shelled animal similar to mollusks), generally swallowed them head-first. They also show evidence of cannibalism, which is common in priapulids today. Preservation Because of its bottom-living habit and the location of the Burgess Shale site at the foot of a high limestone reef, one may presume the relative immobility of Ottoia placed it in danger of being carried away and/or buried by any underwater mud avalanche from the cliff top. This may explain why it remains one of the more abundant specimens of the Burgess Shale fauna. Distribution At least 1000 Burgess Shale specimens are known in the UNSM collections alone, in addition to the ROM collections and hundreds of specimens elsewhere. 677 specimens of Ottoia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 1.29% of the community. Ottoia has also been reported from Middle Cambrian deposits in Utah and Spain, Nevada, and various other localities. Nevertheless, these reports are insecure, and the only verifiable Ottoia macrofossils herald from the Burgess Shale itself. Microfossils corresponding to Ottoia teeth, however, have a much broader distribution, and are found throughout the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. Indeed, putative candidates (initially described under the ICBN as Goniomorpha) may extend the range of Ottoia, or at least similar priapulans, into the Ordovician. References External links Ottoia prolifica (A priapulid worm) from the Smithsonian Institution. Ottoia prolifica from the Hooper Virtual Paleontological Museum (HVPM) Prehistoric protostome genera Burgess Shale fossils Cambrian invertebrates Priapulida Miaolingian first appearances Furongian extinctions Fossil taxa described in 1911 Wheeler Shale Cambrian genus extinctions