The Ediacaran, an era that ended about 540 million years ago, is considered the prelude to the Cambrian explosion, a period ...

Simple animal life may have existed in Earth’s oceans 890 million years ago, according to new research. Recently discovered fossils belonging to ancient sponges might be the earliest known remnants of ...

In a hillside in Yunnan province, southwest China, paleontologists have pulled more than 700 fossils from rock that is roughly 554 million years old. The collection, known as the Jiangchuan Biota, ...

More than 539 million years ago, soft, clarinet-shaped animals anchored themselves to the seafloor on disc-shaped bases, swaying alongside stalked animals resembling worms and baskets. These ...

Collection of fossils includes Ediacaran, Cambrian species, suggesting a transition. If, as the Jiangchuan Biota suggest, the Ediacaran gently eased into the Cambrian, then why has there appeared to ...

Around half a billion years ago, life on Earth went through a rapid transformation, diversifying into almost all of the major animal groups we see today. How and why the Cambrian explosion occurred ...

This animation created for Evolution: "Great Transformations" depicts creatures whose fossils were found at the Burgess Shale. As alien as these creatures seem, they are also surprisingly familiar.