An explosive episode of biological diversification occurred near the beginning of the Cambrian period. Evolutionary rates in the Cambrian have been difficult to quantify accurately because of a lack of high-precision ages. Currently, uranium-lead zircon geochronology is the most powerful method for dating rocks of Cambrian age. Uranium-lead zircon data from lower Cambrian rocks located in northeast Siberia indicate that the Cambrian period began at approximately 544 million years ago and that its oldest (Manykaian) stage lasted no less than 10 million years. Other data indicate that the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages together lasted only 5 to 10 million years. The resulting compression of Early Cambrian time accentuates the rapidity of both the faunal diversification and subsequent Cambrian turnover.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.11539488 | DOI Listing |
Vasc Med
January 2025
Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
PeerJ
January 2025
Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology, Institute of Palaeontology, Yunnan University, Kunming, China.
Vetulicolians are an enigmatic phylum of extinct Cambrian marine invertebrates. They are particularly diverse in the Chengjiang Biota of China, but representatives have been recovered from other Fossil-Lagerstätten (Cambrian Stage 3-Drumian). These organisms are characterized by a bipartite body, which is split into an anterior section and a posterior segmented section connected by a narrow constriction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLife (Basel)
December 2024
State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Early Life and Environments, Department of Geology, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China.
The temporal range of eodiscids and agnostoid arthropods overlaps with several early Paleozoic geological events of evolutionary significance. However, the responses of agnostids to these events and how the perturbations associated with them (both abiotic and/or biotic) may have impacted agnostids remain uncertain. To address this uncertainty, we employ geometric morphometrics to reconstruct morphospace occupation for agnostids, thereby elucidating their evolutionary response to geological events during the early Paleozoic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Adv
January 2025
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, James Hutton Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FE, UK.
Whether metazoan diversification during the Cambrian Radiation was driven by increased marine oxygenation remains highly debated. Repeated global oceanic oxygenation events have been inferred during this interval, but the degree of shallow marine oxygenation and its relationship to biodiversification and clade appearance remain uncertain. To resolve this, we interrogate an interval from ~527 to 519 Ma, encompassing multiple proposed global oceanic oxygenation events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFData Brief
February 2025
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5E2, Canada.
Extensive ichnologic and sedimentologic datasets were gathered from six localities (Fortune Head, Fortune North, Grand Bank Head, Lewin's Cove, Little Dantzic Cove, and Point May) of the Ediacaran-Cambrian Chapel Island Formation at Burin Peninsula, southeastern Newfoundland, eastern Canada. 1708.2 m of sedimentary strata were logged at a centimeter scale (1:40) using a Jacob staff, in addition to 11.
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