Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) biomineralizing organisms have played major roles in the
history of life and the global carbon cycle during the past 541 Ma. Both marine diversification …

Abstract The Ediacaran-Cambrian transition, which incorporates the radiation of animals,
lacks a robust global temporal and spatial framework, resulting in major uncertainty in the …

Appearance of metazoans with mineralized skeletons,“explosion” in biotic diversity and
disparity, infaunalization of the substrate, occurrence of metazoan Konservat Fossil …

The Cambrian diversification of animals was long thought to have begun with an explosive
phase at the start of the Tommotian Age. Recent stratigraphic discoveries, however, suggest …

The Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen famously distinguished between proximal and ultimate
explanations in biology. Proximally, biologists seek a mechanistic understanding of how …

Small shelly fossils (SSFs) occur widely on the Yangtze Platform and have great potential for
biostratigraphic subdivision of pre-trilobitic Early Cambrian strata. Based on the SSF record …

Biomineralized skeletons are widespread in animals, and their origins can be traced to the
latest Ediacaran or early Cambrian fossil record, in virtually all animal groups. The origin of …

Fossil age data and molecular sequences are increasingly combined to establish a
timescale for the Tree of Life. Arthropods, as the most species-rich and morphologically …

The Emu Bay Shale (EBS) of South Australia is anomalous among Cambrian Lagerstätten
because it captures anatomical information that is rare in Burgess Shale–type fossils, and …

Reefs containing abundant calcified metazoans occur at several stratigraphic levels within
carbonate platforms of the terminal Proterozoic Nama Group, central and southern Namibia …