Huayuan biota decodes Earth's first mass extinction https://phys.org/news/2026-01-huayuan-biota-decodes-earth-phanerozoic.html

"#CambrianExplosion was cut short around 513 million years ago by the #SinskEvent—with an #extinction rate on par with the planet's 5 most severe mass extinctions. #Biodiversity remained low for 50 million years... While paleontologists have uncovered dozens of #Cambrian soft-bodied fossil sites... no equivalent deposit had been found from the critical post-Sinsk Event interval... That changed over the past 5 years"

Wild, a rich Cambrian fossil bed has been discovered in China! Many of the species are related to those in the Burgess shale, but 60% are entirely new.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2513485-huge-fossil-bonanza-preserves-512-million-year-old-ecosystem/

#fossils #CambrianExplosion

Please watch my newest #animated #YouTube #video about the #Cambrianexplosion
https://youtu.be/EhUQfMcxUGs?si=5PALKW_J5fkkxOV6

It was a very #shortperiod in Earth's history, began ca. 541 million years ago and lasted only ~13-25 million years, during which giant #evolutionary leaps occurred in #animals. I.a.under influence of increased #oxygen levels, #Bilateria, primeval #Protostomia and #Deuterostomia evolved. We Tetrapoda much later derived from the latter.
©#StefanFWirth 2025

#Pics
©S F.Wirth,#AIassisted own work

#Chitonida (#Mollusca) exist since the #Cambrian. Bodies are covered with #calcareous #plates, flexibly connected. Most feed on vegetation cover. The #CambrianExplosion made based i.a. on #oxygen significant leaps in #animalevolution. Y. Zhang et al. (2025) assume a change in Earth's orbit altering #solarradiation, leading to land #weathering and #nutrients flow to the sea. Algae thrived and produced much oxygen.
© #StefanFWirth 2025

Ref
https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118689

#Pics
#AIassisted, © S.F.Wirth

A newly discovered three-eyed sea predator with gills and claws lived 506 million years ago — and its fossil reveals incredible internal anatomy. #CambrianExplosion #FossilDiscovery #AncientLife

https://geekoo.news/sea-moth-of-the-cambrian-ancient-predator-unearthed-in-canada/

Yesterday's mathematical biology seminar saw my colleague Richard Mann talk on "Covariant evolutionary processes: a theory of the Cambrian explosion and other radiations".

The Cambrian explosion is the appearance of many different animal species about 500 million years ago (see e.g. the Wikipedia article for background). The idea of the talk is that it was not such a special event. We don't need
external environmental factors to explain it. Instead, fairly standard birth-and-death stochastic processes show similar explosions once you take survivorship bias into account. Loosely speaking, the fact that we are here means that there must have been an explosion of species in the past. Not my area of expertise at all but very interesting.

#paleontology #cambrian #CambrianExplosion #bias #SurvivorshipBias #StochasticProcesses