History of Earth: Cambrian Era

An Explosion of Life occured in this epoch, most of the major groups of animals that exist today evolved in the Cambrian period. This huge growth in diversity occurred only in the seas – the land was still bare of life other than micro-organisms – and is called the “Cambrian Explosion”.

Soft-bodied animals and stromalites (bacterial colonies) of the species with hard parts, especially trilobites. Their fossils have been found in the Burgess Shale, a famous fossil-rich area in the Canadian Rocky Mountains which dates back around 500 million years.

During the Cambrian, most of the world’s landscapes were united as the super-continent Gondwana. This was surrounded by the vast Iapetus Ocean. Smaller landscapes that today form Europe, North America, and Siberia lay in tropical and temperate zones. There were no ice caps in the seas and water levels were high.

~ by lord8argos on April 14, 2008.