The rapid diversification of multicellular animal life that took place around the beginning of the Cambrian Period. It resulted in the appearance of almost all modern animal phyla.
See Note at Burgess Shale
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The earlier findings suggested that sponges existed long before the Cambrian explosion and may have been among the planet's earliest animals.
From Science Daily • Feb. 27, 2026
Han said his team was also surprised that some of the animals in the quarry had also been found at Canada's Burgess Shale site, which dates from an early period of the Cambrian explosion.
From Barron's • Jan. 28, 2026
“Creativity could be about to go through a Cambrian explosion, and along with it, the quality of art and entertainment can drastically increase,” Altman wrote, calling this genre of engagement “interactive fan fiction.”
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 26, 2025
Although the species was probably not the common ancestor to all ecdysozoans, the authors note, the discovery contributes a significant addition to our understanding of the diversity of life before the so-called Cambrian explosion.
From Science Magazine • Nov. 19, 2024
Soon after the Cambrian explosion, the oceans teemed with many different forms of life.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
