A new look at fossils from the Cambrian Period around 500 million years ago has revealed that some of the earliest animals ...

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 ...

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

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 ...