Glacial depositions are widely discovered in the late Ediacaran strata all over the world, but
the temporal and spatial distributions of the Ediacaran glaciations remain poorly …

Abstract The Cambrian Explosion by nature is a three-phased explosion of animal body
plans alongside episodic biomineralization, pulsed change of generic diversity, body size …

All animals develop from a single-celled zygote into a complex multicellular organism
through a series of precisely orchestrated processes,. Despite the remarkable conservation …

The origins and the early evolution of multicellular animals required the exploitation of
holozoan genomic regulatory elements and the acquisition of new regulatory tools …

Ichthyosporea is an underexplored group of unicellular eukaryotes closely related to
animals. Thanks to their phylogenetic position, genomic content, and development through a …

The early Ediacaran Weng'an biota (Doushantuo Formation, South China) provides a rare
window onto the period of Earth history in which molecular timescales have inferred the …

Important evolutionary events such as the Cambrian Explosion have inspired many attempts
at explanation: why do they happen when they do? What shapes them, and why do they …

The timescale of animal diversification has been a focus of debate over how evolutionary
history should be calibrated to geologic time. Molecular clock analyses have invariably …

In searching for life in extraterrestrial space, it is essential to act based on an unequivocal
definition of life. In the twentieth century, life was defined as cells that self-replicate …

Sediments of the Torridonian sequence of the Northwest Scottish Highlands contain a wide
array of microfossils, documenting life in a non-marine setting a billion years ago (1 Ga). 1–4 …