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 ...

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 ...

“A lot of the beds that we have are relatively coarse-grained,” explained Hughes ... the theory that this lineage predates the Cambrian explosion,” said Hughes. “Ecdysozoans are ...

Then, about 540 million years ago, something else changed ... dramatically. It was the time of the Cambrian Explosion, an eruption of life when Earth’s very first animals began appearing in the ...