Yorkicystis, the 500 million-year-old relative of starfish that could tell us how early life evolved
It's one of the earliest complex life forms that scientists have found.
Tag: cambrian explosion
The oldest animal life on Earth was discovered in Canada: 890 million years old
That's a lot of "million years ago".
The world’s first animals also caused the first global warming event — but it took 100 million years
There's a metaphor here, and an important lesson for ourselves.
Scientists find ‘nude’ creature that lived half a billion years ago
An unusual creature form a long, long time ago.
Earth’s first giant predators produced killer babies
If the adults weren't scary enough, the babies were also killing machines.
Nope, octopuses probably didn’t come from outer space
It's an interesting idea, but it's probably not true. Calm down.
How algae prepared the ground for complex life 650 million years ago
The story of the rise of the algae.
Newly identifed 500-million-year old ancient worm had 50 spines bulging from its head
It looked rather scary and ugly. Nevertheless, it was an important creature in life's evolutionary history.
The world’s first animal was probably a simple sponge
Before life exploded in the Cambrian 542 million years ago, Earth's inhabitants were generally single-celled simple organisms.
Paleontologists find a ridiculously armored Cambrian worm
It basically looks like a weapon: the fossil of a worm-like animal from the Cambrian period has been presented by ...
500 million year old worm had impressive spiky armor
Paleontologists working in China have discovered fossils of an impressively armored worm that lived during the Cambrian, 500 million years ...
Hallucigenia: the half-billion years old freaky ancestor of molting animals
When the freakish Hallucigenia was first discovered in the 1970s, paleontologists found it nearly impossible to distinguish heads from tail. ...
Hallucigenia revealed: the most surreal creature from the Cambrian
Artistic representation of Hallucigenia. Image via The Independent. It looks like a painting from Salvador Dali - but Hallucigenia was ...
Animals built reefs 550 million years ago
These reefs were built by Cloudina ~548 million years ago, from the Nama Group, Namibia. Credit: Fred Bowyer Corals have ...
Prehistoric shrimps traded claws for nets, filtering food like modern whales
Cambrian fossil is earliest example of large swimming filter-feeder. An evolutionary explosion Half a billion years ago, the world was ...
A book on the Cambrian – with some mind blowing illustrations
Opabinia is an extinct stem-arthropod genus, measuring approximately 4cm head to tail. It had five eyes and a single appendage ...