The Cambrian explosion was an extraordinary phenomenon in the evolution of life on the planet that led to the emergence of ...

Rather than a constant upward trajectory of evolution, it’s been billions of years of boom-and-bust cycles – first an explosion of life, and then a mass extinction of all but the most hardy hangers-on ...

A new study of ancient fossil trails pushes the origins of complex life deeper into Earth’s history, before the Cambrian Period began.

When the Cambrian fauna eventually arrived, Wood thinks it appeared in two pulses. The mollusks, for example, evolved just before the explosion, ...

Cambrian animals would have needed more oxygen than early sponges, concedes Canfield. “But you don't need an increase in oxygen across the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary,” he says; ...

A spiky worm with legs like noodles. A giant predator that looks like a cross between a walrus and a housefly. Many animals that evolved during the Cambrian period, 541 million to 485 million ...

The Cambrian Explosion saw an incredible diversity of life emerge, including many major animal groups alive today. Among them were the chordates, to which vertebrates (animals with backbones) such ...

Cambrian animals would have needed more oxygen than early sponges, concedes Canfield. “But you don't need an increase in oxygen across the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary,” he says; ...

The animals lived on the muddy seafloor at least 330 feet (100 meters) below the surface. "The seafloor near which the animals lived would have been teeming with bottom life," Van Roy said.

The Cambrian Explosion was a dramatic burst of evolutionary changes in life on Earth. During the Cambrian Period, which began about 540 million years, trilobites were the dominant species.

The Cambrian Explosion was unique, Marshall said, because, though there have been mass extinctions — such as that of the dinosaurs — and recoveries since, there has never been another event as ...