Early Cambrian Fossil Rewrites Starfish Family Tree
A 518-million-year-old ambulacrarian fossil from China suggests that the common ancestor of starfish and their relatives was not…
Scientists find evidence for an ancient supercontinent that covered 80 percent of Earth’s surface
A new global isotopic map has revealed vast fragments of ancient Gondwanan crust buried beneath younger mountain belts…
520-Million-Year-Old Fossil from China Fills Gap in Evolutionary History of Cephalopods
Paleontologists have identified the earliest-known cephalopod equipped with a siphuncle — a tubular extension of the mantle found…
Ancient Sea Creature Pushes Back Origins of Spider Fangs to 518 Million Years Ago
Urokodia aequalis, an early Cambrian marine predator from the Chengjiang biota of China, preserves the earliest known evidence…
Earth’s Earliest Animals May Have Thrived Too Easily to Evolve
Fossils from some of the oldest-known animals on Earth, dating from 574 million years ago (Ediacaran period), suggest…
Complex Colonial Life Was Already Thriving during Cambrian Explosion
Tiny colonial animals called bryozoans were long thought to have appeared tens of millions of years after the…
490-Million-Year-Old Arthropod Fossil Fills Puzzling Gap in Fossil Record
A new species of corcoraniid arthropod that lived during the Furongian epoch, between 497 and 487 million years…
Rethinking the Cambrian Explosion: Before Shells and Limbs, There Was the Brain
A new hypothesis proposes that the Cambrian Explosion — the sudden burst of animal diversity 500 million years…
Ediacaran Fossils from China Rewrite Timeline of Animal Evolution
An assemblage of more than 700 Ediacaran fossils from the end of the Ediacaran period indicates that key…
Paleontologists Find Traces of Chitin in Cambrian Trilobite Fossil
The detection of chitin in an Olenellus trilobite from the Carrara Formation (514.5 to 506.5 million years ago)…
Over 500 Million Years Ago, Early Vertebrates Had Four Eyes That Could See 360 Degrees
General morphology of the lateral eyes and pineal complex with their preserved melanosomes in two species of Myllokunmingidae…