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Articles on Cambrian explosion

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A rare find — a fossil of Stanleycaris hirpex with the nervous system preserved. (Jean Bernard Caron/Royal Ontario Museum)

Three-eyed Cambrian fossils shed new light on arthropod head evolution

The discovery of a fossil over 500 million years old reveals new information. Its brain and nervous system are remarkably preserved, filling in some gaps in what we know about arthropod evolution.
The radiodont Anomalocaris, with its large stalked eyes, is considered a top predator that swam in the oceans more than 500 million years ago. Katrina Kenny

Freaky ‘frankenprawns’: ancient deep sea monsters called radiodonts had incredible vision that likely drove an evolutionary arms race

Our study on weird ancient marine animals called radiodonts supports the idea that vision played a crucial role during the Cambrian Explosion, a rapid burst of evolution about 500 million years ago.
Ilya Bobrovskiy

Ancient sponges or just algae? New research overturns chemical evidence for the earliest animals

Ancient fatty molecules, once believed to be traces of some of the first animals to live on Earth, may have been produced by algae instead.
A modern arthropod (the centipede Cormocephalus) crawls over its Cambrian ‘flatmate’ (the trilobite Estaingia). Michael Lee / South Australian Museum and Flinders University

Life quickly finds a way: the surprisingly swift end to evolution’s big bang

Modern animals took over our planet much more quickly than previously thought. This has both welcome and disturbing implications for the future of life on our rapidly changing planet
The cycles of nutrients into the oceans following the building of mountains may have been a prime driver of evolutionary change. John Long, Flinders University

Plate tectonics may have driven the evolution of life on Earth

The rise and fall of the essential elements for life could have influenced the way life evolved over many millions of years.

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