The Ediacaran–Cambrian transition represents an inflection point in Earth history. At this time, animal-derived skeletal parts become common as fossils, heralding the dawn of the Phanerozoic fossil record as we know it. Yet most organisms (extant and extinct) lack mineralized skeletons. Consequently, our view of this key evolutionary radiation is heavily biased toward taxa that produced shells. On Baltica, Ediacaran–Cambrian strata have recently been shown to host a wealth of microscopic fragmentary remains of non-mineralized ‘soft bodied’ animals, with the potential to circumvent this bias.