cambrian period

Nick Colella 9/29/24

Cambrian explosion

Cambrian period

Organisms

541 to 485 million years ago

The Cambrian explosion was the first major event of the Paleozoic era and began during the cambrian period. During the first 40 million years of the cambrian most major groups of animals that we see today were created. The cambrian explosion was the beginning of exoskeletons tails for swimming and large preditory lifeforms.

Anomalocaris was one of the first predatory life forms on earth. It was equiped with the ability to swim and a hard exo skeleton. Organisms like Pikaia and Haikouella took a different approach and developed a long flexible tail used for swimming. They were primarily known for being the ancestor of vertibrates. Trilobites were also a very common creature during the cambrian era. Trilobites were a shelled marine arthropod that grew to around 2 feet in size. Cambroraster falcatus was a shelled arthropod that highly resembles modern horseshoe crabs

Climate

Interesting Facts

Sources

Cambrian extinction

The main cause for the cambrian extinction is primarily unknown however most theories suggust it had to do with a drop in oxygen levels and a rapid cooling of global temperatures.

Cambrian period

Climate

The average temperature of the cambrian period was mostly waarm and averaged around 72 degrees F. Due to the rise of phitoplankton, there was much more oxygen in the atmosphere.

Interesting Facts

Produced the most intense burst of evolution ever known.Began the begining of fossilized remains since creatures with backbones, shells and exoskeletons were created during this time.The cambrian explosion created the first complex eyes in living organisms.The organisms that evolved during the cambrian explosion are the ansestors to all lifeforms on our planet. Some of which are still alive today. Most of Earth during the Cambrian period consisted of scattered land masses including a massive super continent known as Gondwana. At this time Gondwana contained the southern continents—South America, Africa, India, Madagascar, Australia, and Antarctica.

Sources

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-biology2/chapter/the-cambrian-explosion/https://www.livescience.com/28098-cambrian-period.html https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/cambrian#:~:text=The%20Cambrian%20period%2C%20part%20of,backbones)%20such%20as%20humans%20belong.