Bizarre six-legged creatures and other “surprising discoveries” are beginning to clarify evolution after the Biological Big Bang.
Between 540 million and 485 million years ago, during the Cambrian period, so many new, complex animal life forms arose that paleontologists speak of the Cambrian Explosion or the Biological Big Bang. But by 400 million years ago, almost all of those species disappeared, eventually replaced by the ancestors of most modern animals. There have been few clues about what happened in between, but
“This is muddying the water,” says Joanna Wolfe, a Harvard University biologist who helped characterize the site’s opabiniids for a publication last year inbut was not involved in the broader analysis published today. Many researchers had assumed Cambrian critters would be long gone by the time of the Welsh fossils. Instead, “a lot of the groups that are modern are surviving alongside those [early] things,” Wolfe marvels.
So far, the researchers say they have found 170 species. “There is every reason to expect that the diversity of the fauna will continue to climb as the authors continue their research,” Erwin predicts. But even the currently documented diversity emphasizes the underappreciated importance of this time, called the Ordovician, which set the stage for the world’s current biodiversity. “It’s a period that we don’t know very much about,” Muir says.
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