Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and
geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic …

Phylogenomics underpins a stable and mostly well-resolved hypothesis for the
interrelationships of extant arthropods. Exceptionally preserved fossils are integrated into …

The evolutionary events during the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition (~ 541 Myr ago) are
unparalleled in Earth history. The fossil record suggests that most extant animal phyla …

Twenty years after its proposal, the monophyly of molting protostomes—Ecdysozoa—is a
well-corroborated hypothesis, but the interrelationships of its major subclades are more …

Accumulated records of organic microfossils span billions of years of Earth history. The
majority of this record consists of prokaryotes plus eukaryotes of a protistan grade, yet this …

Burgess Shale-type faunas are critical to our understanding of animal evolution during the
Cambrian, giving an unrivalled view of the morphology of ancient organisms and the …

Ecdysozoans (Phyla Arthropoda, Kinorhyncha, Loricifera, Nematoda, Nematomorpha,
Onychophora, Priapulida, Tardigrada) are invertebrates bearing a tough, periodically …

Estimates for animal antiquity exhibit a significant disconnect between those from molecular
clocks, which indicate crown animals evolved∼ 800 million years ago (Ma), and those from …

Radiodonts, a clade of Cambro-Devonian stem group euarthropods, have classically been
regarded as nektonic apex predators. However, many aspects of radiodont morphology and …

The fossilized traces of burrowing worms have taken on a considerable importance in
studies of the Cambrian explosion, partly because of their use in defining the base of the …