The processes responsible for preserving the exceptional quality of the Burgess Shale fossils are unclear, due partly to two related issues: whether the animals were buried where they lived (or may have been carried long distances by sediment flows), or whether the water at the burial sites was anoxic, limiting the effect of oxygen on degradation. The traditional view is that soft bodies and organs could only be preserved in anoxic conditions, otherwise oxygen-breathing bacteria would have made decomposition too rapid for fossilization. This would imply that the sea-floor organisms could not have lived there.