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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For years, scientists believed that the rapid rise of diverse and complex animals, known as the Cambrian explosion, began around 535 million years ago.
From Science Daily • Apr. 6, 2026
Then came the Cambrian explosion, known as evolution's "big bang", roughly 540 million years ago.
From Barron's • Jan. 28, 2026
The species was probably not the ecdysozoans’ common ancestor, the authors say, but the discovery adds to the diversity of life before the Cambrian explosion.
From Science Magazine • Nov. 20, 2024
Think of it as the sequel to the more famous, earlier Cambrian explosion, which saw the rapid origin of many different kinds of animal bodies and groups of living things in the seas.
From Slate • Oct. 21, 2024
Then some 600 million years ago, the monopolizing grip of the algae was broken and an enormous proliferation of new lifeforms emerged, an event called the Cambrian explosion.
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.
