Recent fossil discoveries from the lower Cambrian Emu Bay Shale (EBS) on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, have provided critical insights into the tempo of the Cambrian explosion of animals, such as the origin and seemingly rapid evolution of arthropod compound eyes, as well as extending the geographical ranges of several groups to the East Gondwanan margin, supporting close faunal affinities with South China. The EBS also holds great potential for broadening knowledge on taphonomic pathways involved in the exceptional preservation of fossils in Cambrian Konservat-Lagerstätten. EBS fossils display a range of taphonomic modes for a variety of soft tissues, especially phosphatization and pyritization, in some cases recording a level of anatomical detail that is absent from most Cambrian Konservat-Lagerstätten.

The Cambrian 'great appendage' arthropod 'Tanglangia' Luo and Hu in Luo et al., 1999, has until now been known from a single species from the Chengjiang biota of southwest China (Cambrian Series 2, Stage 3). A new species from the Emu Bay Shale Konservat-Lagerstätte on Kangaroo Island, South Australia (Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4), 'Tanglangia rangatanga' sp. nov., extends the geographic and stratigraphic ranges of this genus and amplifies the biogeographic links between non-biomineralised faunas from the early Cambrian of Australian East Gondwana and the South China Plate.