The Cambrian Explosion

Here's a brief description of the Cambrian Explosion from The Atheist Experience. They summed it up pretty well, though. ^__^

The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively rapid appearance, over a period of many million years, of most major groups of complex animals around 530 million years ago, as found in the fossil record.

This was accompanied by a major diversification of other organisms, including animals, phytoplankton, and calcimicrobes.

Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 or 80 million years the rate of evolution accelerated by an order of magnitude (as defined in terms of the extinction and origination rate of species) and the diversity of life began to resemble todays.

The Cambrian explosion has generated extensive scientific debate. The seemingly rapid appearance of fossils in the Primordial Strata was noted as early as the mid 19th century, and Charles Darwin saw it as one of the main objections that could be made against his theory of evolution by natural selection.

The long-running puzzlement about the appearance of the Cambrian fauna, seemingly abruptly and from nowhere, centers on three key points: whether there really was a mass diversification of complex organisms over a relatively short period of time during the early Cambrian; what might have caused such rapid change; and what it would imply about the origin and evolution of animals.

Interpretation is difficult due to a limited supply of evidence, based mainly on an incomplete fossil record and chemical signatures left in Cambrian rocks.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian...