Maotianshan Shales fossil record. Phylum Porifera (sponges; 15 species) and Priapulida (16 species) are also well represented. Other phyla represented are Brachiopoda, Chaetognatha, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Echinodermata, Hyolitha, Nematomorpha, Phoronida, and Chordata. Possible molluscs include "Wiwaxia" and "Nectocaris". About one in eight animals are problematic forms of uncertain affinity, some of which may have been evolutionary experiments that survived for only a brief period as benthic environments rapidly changed in the Cambrian. Chengjiang is the richest source of the lobopodia, a group including many early panarthropods, with six genera represented: "Luolishania", "Paucipodia", "Cardiodictyon"," Hallucigenia" (also known from the Burgess Shale), "Microdictyon", and "Onychodictyon".
Bacterial phyla CPR3, Kazan, Perigrinibacteria, SM2F11, WS6, and WWE3 were more recently proposed to belong to the larger CPR Group. To complicate matters, it has been suggested that several of these phyla are themselves actually superphyla (see the section on cryptic superphyla below). The proposed superphylum, Terrabacteria, includes Actinobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Deinococcus–Thermus, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, and candidate phylum OP10. It has been proposed that several of the classes of the phylum Proteobacteria are phyla in their own right, which would make Proteobacteria a superphylum. It was recently proposed that the class Epsilonproteobacteria be combined with the order Desulfurellales to create the new phylum Epsilonbacteraeota.