Small shelly fossils (SSFs) have long been recognized as important to the studies of both metazoan evolution and the onset of biomineralization during the Cambrian radiation. The marked decline in the occurrence, diversity and abundance of SSFs in the middle to late Cambrian, when compared with the early Cambrian, has often been regarded as a result of the closure of a phosphatization window. Despite this, there have been numerous and consistent reports of SSFs from the middle Cambrian and younger deposits. To identify possible factors influencing SSF preservation, five microfacies including bioclastic limestone, flat-pebble conglomerates with bioclasts, hummocky cross-stratified grainstone with bioclasts, bioclastic grainstone in hardgrounds and glauconite bioclastic wackstone-packstone, from Cambrian Series 2 to Miaolingian in North China are compared to assess how differences in lithology impact the preservation potential of SSFs. Our results, based on 35,161 SSF specimens from deposits across six sections, suggest that there are still abundant and diverse SSFs in the middle Cambrian of North China preserved in ways not exclusively reliant on the presence of phosphate and that SSF preservation can be linked to the differences in microfacies in the early to middle Cambrian of North China. (c) 2025 China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Geosciences (Beijing). This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).