Jump To:

• Cambrian explosion
  Cambrian explosion

  noun

  the rapid appearance during the Cambrian Period of a large number of multicelled life forms which are the ancestors of almost all modern animal phyla.
• Cambrian Explosion
  Cambrian Explosion

  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.

Cambrian explosion

American  

noun

1. the rapid appearance during the Cambrian Period of a large number of multicelled life forms which are the ancestors of almost all modern animal phyla.

---

Cambrian Explosion Scientific  

1. 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.

2. See Note at Burgess Shale

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Cambrian explosion Cambrian Explosion

The Ediacaran period occurred before the Cambrian explosion, a major evolutionary turning point when rising oxygen levels helped complex organisms diversify rapidly across Earth's oceans.

From Science Daily ● May 12, 2026

Then came the Cambrian explosion, known as evolution's "big bang", roughly 540 million years ago.

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

By the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of multicellular organisms about 540 million years ago, the ancestors of today’s ecdysozoans were already alive and varied in form and behavior, suggesting they arose even earlier.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 20, 2024

Soon after the Cambrian explosion, the oceans teemed with many different forms of life.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

It shows that important elements of their body plan were already established shortly after the Cambrian Explosion, a time when life was rapidly diversifying.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 3, 2026

It's not always an absolutely gobsmacking profusion of uncontrollably bizarre life, as occurred with what's aptly called the Cambrian Explosion, a period about 540 million years ago when evolution got extremely creative.

From Salon ● Feb. 25, 2025

During the Cambrian Explosion more than 500 million years ago, these weird worms — which lived inside long, cone-shaped tubes — were some of the most common predators on the seafloor.

From New York Times ● Mar. 26, 2024

In Wales, paleontologists have uncovered a rich source of 462-million-year-old fossils that reveal more overlap than expected between animals that evolved during the Cambrian Explosion 40 million years earlier and the ancestors of modern species.

From Science Magazine ● May 3, 2023

Paleontologists refer to this event as the Cambrian Explosion, named after the first period in the Paleozoic.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2017