A new scientific review suggests that ancient supercontinents, mountain building, and changes in Earth's magnetic field ...

The Cambrian explosion was a major diversification of animal life that unfolded early in the Cambrian period, which began ...

The Cambrian period, part of the Paleozoic era, produced the most intense burst of evolution ever known. The Cambrian ...

For decades, scientists have sought to explain the so-called "Cambrian Explosion," a pivotal period over 500 million years ago when a remarkable diversity of animal life appeared in the fossil record.

Two nearly complete fossil mouthparts from Morocco's Fezouata Shale are identified as hurdiid radiodont oral cones and reveal ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Scientists believe they’ve deduced why prehistoric Ediacara Biota fossils have remained preserved for millions of years. The fossils of these ...

A newly discovered trove of fossils in southwestern China is shifting the timeline of when complex animals evolved. The diversity and complexity of animal life is thought to have increased rapidly ...

Animal life is extraordinarily diverse and complex, having colonised almost all environments on Earth – from hostile hydrothermal vents in the deep sea to the skies across our continents. But all this ...

Bryozoans are tiny, filter-feeding colonial invertebrates that thrive in the world's oceans today, yet for decades their origins presented a puzzling gap in the fossil record. While nearly every other ...

In the first 20 million years of the Cambrian period, Earth experienced an explosion of life—a great evolutionary era dubbed the Cambrian Explosion. Scientists have differing views on what drove this ...

For decades, scientists have wondered what triggered the sudden "explosion" of complex animal life on Earth. This new hypothesis suggests that the answer isn't found in shells or legs, but in the ...