Author: Carolyn Gramling / Source: Science News
For most of the nearly 3.5 billion years of documented life on Earth, creatures were simple, dominated by organisms such as bacteria, algae and fungi (SN: 10/13/18, p. 10).
Then, beginning about 541 million years ago, life quickly diversified into an array of new, complex forms. This flourishing, called the Cambrian explosion, took place within about 25 million years. Fossils from the period have been preserved in rocks at more than 50 known sites worldwide, the most famous of which is Canada’s Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909.
At five standout Cambrian sites, hundreds to thousands of different species were buried in the soft mud of long-ago seafloors. Rapid burial led to the exceptional preservation of soft-bodied animals as well as of soft tissues, such as brains, guts, eyes and skin, that typically don’t fossilize well. A newly reported site, Qingjiang in China, holds a wealth of exquisitely preserved soft-bodied…
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