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The Cambrian explosion (also known as Cambrian radiation [1] or Cambrian diversification) is an interval of time beginning approximately in the Cambrian period of the early Paleozoic, when a sudden radiation of complex life occurred and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.
The Cambrian explosion was a period of rapid multicellular growth. Most animal life during the Cambrian was aquatic. Trilobites were once assumed to be the dominant life form at that time, [58] but this has proven to be incorrect. Arthropods were by far the most dominant animals in the ocean, but trilobites were only a minor part of the total ...
There are many other comparable Cambrian lagerstätten; indeed such assemblages are far more common in the Cambrian than in any other period. This is mainly due to the limited extent of burrowing activity; as such bioturbation became more prevalent throughout the Cambrian, environments capable of preserving organisms' soft parts became much ...
This biota largely disappeared with the rapid increase in biodiversity known as the Cambrian explosion. Most of the currently existing body plans of animals first appeared in the fossil record of the Cambrian rather than the Ediacaran. For macroorganisms, the Cambrian biota appears to have almost completely replaced the organisms that dominated ...
The "Cambrian substrate revolution" [1] or "Agronomic revolution", [2] evidenced in trace fossils, is a sudden diversification of animal burrowing during the early Cambrian period. Before this "widening of the behavioural repertoire", [ 3 ] bottom-dwelling animals mainly grazed on the microbial mats that lined the surface of the substrate ...
The submergence of Laurentia ended a lengthy period of widespread continental denudation that exhumed and deeply eroded Precambrian rocks and exposed them to extensive physical and chemical weathering at the Earth's surface. As a result, Powell's Great Unconformity is unusual in its geographic extent and its stratigraphic significance. [6] [7]
Along with the Burgess Shale, the Maotianshan Shales are remarked as "our best window into the Cambrian 'explosion'", [5] especially on the origin of chordates. [ 6 ] History and scientific significance
Haikouichthys / ˌ h aɪ k u ˈ ɪ k θ ɪ s / is an extinct genus of craniate (animals with notochords and distinct heads) that lived 518 million years ago, during the Cambrian explosion of multicellular life. The type species, Haikouichthys ercaicunensis, was first described in 1999. [2]