3 min read The Cambrian period, part of the Paleozoic era ... including many major animal groups alive today. Among them were the chordates, to which vertebrates (animals with backbones) such ...

This daily feast-and-famine cycle in oxygen availability created an intense physiological challenge for early animals, forcing them to develop adaptations to handle fluctuations in nutrients. For ...

A mysterious fossilized creature discovered more than a century ago has finally been decoded, offering stunning insights into ...

In a quiet part of what is now South Australia, more than half a billion years ago, life was locked in battle. The ocean ...

All animal evolution for the last half billion ... Recent research suggests that the period prior to the Cambrian explosion saw the gradual evolution of a "genetic tool kit" of genes that govern ...

Arthropods were the most diverse animal group in the Cambrian period and the Ordovician period that followed. The 452-million-year-old limestone slab shown here captures an Ordovician menagerie ...

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 ...

For over a century, the Cambrian arthropod Helmetia expansa remained a mystery. Discovered by paleontologist Charles ...

For over a century, scientists have been puzzled by a mysterious fossil called Helmetia expansa, an ancient arthropod from ...

My team's new research, published in Nature Communications, suggests that these drastic oxygen fluctuations played a crucial role in this dramatic period ... out in the Cambrian. Animals evolved ...

In a new study published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, Harvard researchers in the Department of Organismic and ...