A new look at fossils from the Cambrian Period around 500 million years ago has revealed that some of the earliest animals spent time on mudflats that were sometimes exposed to the air – a find that c ...

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 ...

Some of the best information about early animals comes from fossils dating back to the Cambrian period, which started around 541 million years ago. During this time, Earth experienced a burst of ...

Its end caused an alteration of climate that made possible the proliferation of animal life in Cambrian times There is considerable geological evidence for an extensive glaciation some 600 million ...

Researchers think there are now around 7.7 million animal species living on Earth, with thousands more discovered every year.

All animal evolution for the last half billion years has come from tinkering with these Cambrian body plans. Then, between about 570 and 530 million years ago, another burst of diversification ...

Millions more species are believed to be still unknown to science. Arthropods were the most diverse animal group in the Cambrian period and the Ordovician period that followed. The 452-million ...

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 ...

Scientists say the crustaceans have developed a visual system based on proteins that help them detect the little light that ...