The cambrian period

The cambrian period

541-485 million years ago

World

Event

Interesting Facts

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The Earth during the Cambrian Period

The Cambrian Period featured a world that was warm and wet, with very high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. There were no ice caps in either of the poles during this time.

Life during the Cambrian Period

Life during this period was exclusively marine, with life diversifying into most major animal groups found today. The most famous forms of life during this period are Trilobites, Crinoids (Sea Lilies), Anomalocaris, and early corals.

Citation: Foster, John Russell. Cambrian Ocean World : Ancient Sea Life of North America. 1st ed. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2014. Print.

The Cambrian Explosion

The Cambrian Explosion is characterized as the rapid and intense diversification of life on Earth, with the sudden appearence of skeletal remains in the fossil record. It marks the development of most animal phyla and important traits that are found today, such as advanced eyes, protective shells, backbones, exoskeletons, and predator-prey relationships.

The Cambrian Explosion started when organisms, such as cyanobacteria, started to photosynthesize and increase oxygen levels in the atmosphere.This, and the formation of an ozone layer allowed more complex life to form on Earth.

Citation: Zhang, Xingliang, and Degan Shu. “Current Understanding on the Cambrian Explosion: Questions and Answers.” Paläontologische Zeitschrift 95.4 (2021): 641–660. Web.

Interesting Facts

1. The Burgress Shale deposit in Canada is one of the most famous fossil sites that contain imprints from the Cambrian Period. It has some of the best preserved soft-part imprints in the world.
2. The first fish developed during the Cambrian Period and were the ancestors of all fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
3. Many species, such as the hallucigenia, had strange traits that either evolved into modern animal groups or disappeared completely.
4. Most landmasses were joined into the giant supercontinent named Gondwana, though it was mostly barren rock with little to no life on land

The first complete Anomalocaris fossil found at the Burgress Shale

Haikouichthys - early vertebrate from the Cambrian explosion

Hallucigenia

Gondwana