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.
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Cambrian explosion
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Cambrian Explosion
Cambrian ExplosionThe 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
Americannoun
Cambrian Explosion
Scientific
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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.
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See Note at Burgess Shale
Example Sentences
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This period marked a major evolutionary shift from predominantly soft-bodied organisms toward the Cambrian explosion, when animals with greater mobility, shells, and skeletons became increasingly prominent.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 17, 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
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
Soon after the Cambrian explosion, the oceans teemed with many different forms of life.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
These organisms lived only tens of millions of years before the Cambrian Explosion, a pivotal period that began about 540 million years ago and marked the rapid rise of complex and diverse animal life.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 27, 2026
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
Between 540 million and 485 million years ago, during the Cambrian period, so many new, complex animal life forms arose that paleontologists speak of the Cambrian Explosion or the Biological Big Bang.
From Science Magazine ● May 1, 2023
The Cambrian Explosion started about 542 million years ago and lasted 15 million years, and was when many modern phyla began appearing in the fossil record.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2018
But the inevitable Cambrian Explosion of masterfully stupid general election ads has arrived this week as campaigns pivot away from the primary battles of yore and into the dark, depressing homeward stretch.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2014
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