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 are ...

Around half a billion years ago, life on Earth went through a rapid transformation, diversifying into almost all of the major animal groups we see today. How and why the Cambrian explosion occurred ...

Animals of the Cambrian period went through one of the greatest evolutionary surges in history, known as the Cambrian Explosion. Animals of the Cambrian period likely began as worms or worm-like ...

More than 539 million years ago, soft, clarinet-shaped animals anchored themselves to the seafloor on disc-shaped bases, swaying alongside stalked animals resembling worms and baskets. These ...

A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life emerged on Earth, revealing that many key animal groups had already evolved before the ...

Add Popular Science (opens in a new tab) More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results.

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 ...

A huge and beautifully preserved suite of fossils discovered in China has cast doubt on the idea that complex life flourished dramatically during a rapid burst of evolution known as the Cambrian ...

A remarkable fossil discovery in southwest China is rewriting the story of how complex animal life began, showing that many key animal groups appeared millions of years earlier than scientists once ...

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.

Reconstruction of Jiangchuan biota (~554-539 million years ago). Credit: Xiaodong Wang. A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life ...