The Cambrian appearance of fossils representing diverse phyla has long inspired
hypotheses about possible genetic or environmental catalysts of early animal evolution …

▪ Abstract The Ediacara biota (575–542 Ma) marks the first appearance of large,
architecturally complex organisms in Earth history. Present evidence suggests that the …

Diverse bilaterian clades emerged apparently within a few million years during the early
Cambrian, and various environmental, developmental, and ecological causes have been …

A variety of sedimentary structures and patterns in Proterozoic siliciclastic sedimentary rocks
cannot be explained by known inorganic processes. In particular, certain bed-surface …

The strange biota of Neoproterozoic sea bottoms become more understandable if we
assume that otherwise soft sediments were sealed by firm and erosion-resistant biomats …

Ediacara fossils document an important evolutionary episode just before the Cambrian
explosion and hold critical information about the early evolution of macroscopic and …

The earliest evolution of the animals remains a taxing biological problem, as all extant
clades are highly derived and the fossil record is not usually considered to be helpful. The …

The Ediacaran–Cambrian transition signals a drastic change in both diversity and
ecosystem construction. The Ediacara biota (consisting of various metazoan stem lineages …

It has long been assumed that the extant bilaterian phyla generally have their origin in the
Cambrian explosion, when they appear in an essentially modern form. Both these …

The Mickwitzia sandstone, south-central Sweden, consists of about 10 m of Lower Cambrian
clastic sediments deposited in an epicontinental setting. An in formal, lithologically based …