The Cambrian Explosion

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Exhibit by Patricia Brennan

The Cambrian Explosion refers to a sharp and sudden increase in the rate of evolution.

About 543 million years ago, in the early Cambrian period, intense diversification resulted in more than 35 new animal phyla. However, new discoveries show that the "explosion" started ~565 Ma in the Neoproterozic era.

Geologists and paleontologists studying Neoproterozoic and Cambrian aged rocks, molecular biologists' advances understanding genetic relationships between animal phylum, are bringing in new evidence and new interpretations at such a rate that the story changes and becomes clearer almost on a monthly basis.
Painting by Mike Leveille, photographed by Sonia Boucher




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