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
Then came the Cambrian explosion, known as evolution's "big bang", roughly 540 million years ago.
From Barron's • Jan. 28, 2026
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
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
Before the Cambrian explosion species seem to have succeeded one another rather slowly.
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.
