Life quickly finds a way: the surprisingly swift end to evolution’s big bang

Mike Lee; Greg Edgecombe; John Paterson

Life quickly finds a way: the surprisingly swift end to evolution’s big bang

Mike Lee, Greg Edgecombe, John Paterson

College of Science and Engineering

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Abstract

The Cambrian explosion more than 500 million years ago is often considered biology’s “big bang”.

Virtually all the major kinds of animals evolved in life’s greatest ever burst of evolution, rapidly populating a weird and biologically sparse planet with everything from jellyfish to vertebrates, and turning it into the Earth we recognise today.

But our recent study, published this week in PNAS, shows this burst of rapid evolutionary innovation also ended surprisingly quickly.

Original language	English
Pages	1-6
Number of pages	6
Specialist publication	The Conversation
Publisher	The Conversation
Publication status	Published - 19 Feb 2019

Keywords

Evolution
Cambrian explosion
Life

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Final published versionFinal published version, 4.85 MBLicence: CC BY

https://theconversation.com/life-quickly-finds-a-way-the-surprisingly-swift-end-to-evolutions-big-bang-110984Licence: CC BY

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Life quickly finds a way: the surprisingly swift end to evolution’s big bang

Abstract

Keywords

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