Visitors at the Miraculous Life in the Ancient Oceans: Exhibition of Premium Fossils from the Cambrian Chengjiang Biota, held at the Natural History Museum of China in Beijing. WANG QIAN/CHINA ...

A new study of ancient fossil trails pushes the origins of complex life deeper into Earth’s history, before the Cambrian Period began.

The Cambrian explosion was an extraordinary phenomenon in the evolution of life on the planet that led to the emergence of ...

The Cambrian period, part of the Paleozoic era, ... The iconic arthropods of the Cambrian were the trilobites, which left a huge number of fossils. Trilobites had flattened, ...

Rather than a constant upward trajectory of evolution, it’s been billions of years of boom-and-bust cycles – first an explosion of life, and then a mass extinction of all but the most hardy hangers-on ...

Durham University researchers discover Youti yuanshi, a fossil revealing the ancient ancestors of insects and their evolution ...

Researchers have unearthed numerous fossils from the Cambrian period. (Image credit: NPS) Karma Nanglu, a paleontologist at Harvard University who studies Cambrian and Ordovician fossils, told ...

Half a billion years ago, an unusual-looking animal crawled over the sea floor, using tentacles to pick up food particles along the way. Known as Rotadiscus grandis, this animal lived during the ...

Palaeontologists are helping resolve the evolution and ecology of Odaraia, a taco-shaped marine animal that lived during the Cambrian period. Fossils reveal Odaraia had mandibles. Palaeontologists ...

This period, taking place some 541-530 million years ago, marks the origins of most modern animal life. But, a second look at these fossils might indicate that’s not such a great fit after all.

Exactly when the process started no one knows, but fossils from the Cambrian period some 540m years ago show life on Earth going through a remarkable period of diversification. The point at which ...