A fossil deposit in Yunnan, China, dating back 546–539 million years, shows that diverse, complex animals thrived well before the Cambrian explosion. The Jiangchuan Biota includes early deuterostomes, ...

In the red-brown siltstones of Yunnan province, southwest China, paleontologists have found something that was not supposed to be there: worm-shaped animals with bilateral symmetry, preserved ...

The Cambrian Explosion is a landmark moment in the history of life on Earth when many of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record. New research, however, suggests that many of ...

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 ...