dramatically. It was the time of the Cambrian Explosion, an eruption of life when Earth’s very first animals began appearing in the fossil record — the ancestors of all major animal groups ...

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 ...

Environmental stress in evolution can be reframed as a powerful engine of innovation, not simply a barrier to survival.

This animation created for Evolution: "Great Transformations" depicts creatures whose fossils were found at the Burgess Shale. As alien as these creatures seem, they are also surprisingly familiar.

Worminess wasn’t the only factor that brought oblivion to the Ediacarans and triggered the Cambrian explosion—there also were changes in ocean chemistry that allowed animals to acquire hard ...

These complementary datasets enhance our understanding of the nervous systems of early Cambrian animals and highlight the diversity of preservation modes. Ecdysozoans are characterized by a ring ...

Some animals could likely tell the difference between light and dark, but they never knew whether that looming shadow was a friend or foe. Then, at the beginning of the Cambrian Period, life opened ...

Visitors at the Miraculous Life in the Ancient Oceans: Exhibition of Premium Fossils from the Cambrian Chengjiang Biota, held at the Natural History Museum of China in Beijing. WANG QIAN/CHINA ...