Environmental stress in evolution can be reframed as a powerful engine of innovation, not simply a barrier to survival.

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 ...

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 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 ...

Animals living about 500 million years ago spent time on mudflats that were periodically exposed to the air. The finding suggests that some of the earliest animals were able to survive outside of ...

This discovery provides more insight into how animals evolved from single ... of that latter phenomenon is the Cambrian Explosion—the geologic period some 530 million years ago when Earth ...

During the Proterozoic era, oxygen produced by photosynthesizing bacteria collects in the oceans and then in the atmosphere. Iron present in exposed rocks reacts with this oxygen, and rust colors ...

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 ...

A major fossil site bearing witness to the Cambrian explosion and providing evolutionary evidence for early life-forms, it ...

visitors can follow fossil evidence tracing the evolution of life during the Cambrian period — the first geological period of the Paleozoic era — which lasted from 541 million to 485 million ...