This stunning and unique evolutionary flowering is termed the "Cambrian explosion," taking the name of the geological age in whose early part it occurred. But it was not as rapid as an explosion ...

3 min read The Cambrian period, part of the Paleozoic era, produced the most intense burst of evolution ever known. The Cambrian Explosion saw ... marine worms buried during undersea mud avalanches.

The hypothetical ancestral echinoderm is at the center of the graph with evolutionary pathways radiating outward during and following the Cambrian Explosion to establish the major echinoderm body ...