I don't think your skepticism is warranted. EamonnMR provides a link to an article describing the paper Acute vision in the giant Cambrian predator Anomalocaris

I don't think your skepticism is warranted. EamonnMR provides a link to an article describing the paper Acute vision in the giant Cambrian predator Anomalocaris and the origin of compound eyes [1]. This animal was a pre-cursor to modern crustaceans like shrimp and crabs. The compound lens in this fossil has about 16K lenses. Today's OP describes the paper Insights into a 429-million-year-old compound eye [2] in a trilobite fossil with about 200 lenses. Logically, I can't imagine how free-swimming predators could have evolved in the Cambrian without eyes. Having two very distinct species of arthropods with fossilized compound eyes is not "his-story" but key evidence that furthers our understanding of the Evolution of the Eye [3]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10689 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10689 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69219-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69219-0 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye