Cambrian explosion

English 2017 November 24 Etymology thumb|An artist’s impression of various species of class †Archaeocyatha class, sponge-like marine animals from the Cambrian period Of unclear origin, inspired by George Gaylord Simpson's description of "explosive" evolution. The earliest known use is in a BSCS high school biology textbook written in 1961 under the direction of paleobotanist Wilson Steward.Beasecker et al. It’s Time to Defuse the Cambrian “Explosion” https://www.geosociety.org/GSA/Publications/GSA_Today/GSA/GSAToday/groundwork/G460GW/article.aspx GSA Today Geological Society of America December 2020 30 12 26–27 https://web.archive.org/web/20260317092303/https://www.geosociety.org/GSA/Publications/GSA_Today/GSA/GSAToday/groundwork/G460GW/article.aspx 17 March 2026 Pronunciation en /ˈkam.bɹɪ.ən ɪkˈspləʊ.ʒən/ RP en /ˈkæm.bɹi.ən ɛkˈsploʊ.ʒən/ GA en en-au-Cambrian explosion.ogg AU en Cam bri an ex plo sion Proper noun s en evolutionary _ biology The relatively rapid appearance, during the Cambrian Period around 541 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record. en biological big bang en Evolution of the Earliest Animals J[ames] William Schopf Major Events in the History of Life [Proceedings from a Symposium Convened by the IGPP Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life at the University of California, Los Angeles, Held January 11, 1991] Sudbury, Mass.; London Jones and Bartlett Publishers 1992 87 https://books.google.com/books?id=py01HMuAIh4C&pg=PA87 978-0-86720-268-7 Alternatively, if animals had a relatively long Precambrian history, why do so many kinds appear abruptly and more or less synchronously in the fossil record during Early Cambran time? Was there an external environmental factor that either prevented animals from becoming fossilizable (i.e., large muscular, and/or mineralized) prior to the beginning of the Cambrian, or did some biological or environmental event trigger the metazoan radiation? Hypotheses that have been advanced to explain these questions tend to focus on either an external environmental control on, or an internal property of, the organisms that participated in the Cambrian explosion. en Affected Environment Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Geothermal Leasing in the Western United States DES 08-22 [Washington, D.C.] US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management; US Department of Agriculture, United States Forest Service May 2008 I (Programmatic Analysis) paragraph 3.5.4 3-49–3-50 https://books.google.com/books?id=9RExAQAAMAAJ&pg=SA3-PA49 232119141 A major adaptive radiation took place during the Cambrian Period that resulted in the evolution of most of the known phyla (broad groupings of organisms) as well as other phyla that have since become extinct. This geologically rapid appearance of diverse multicellular life is referred to as the Cambrian explosion, and is best documented in the fauna of the Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian-age Stephan Formation) of British Columbia. en Michael Ebifegha Introduction Creation or Evolution?: Origin of Species in Light of Science’s Limitations and Historical Records Bloomington, Ind. w:iUniverse 2011 7 https://books.google.com/books?id=gw_YNFnbGkUC&pg=PA7 978-1-4502-8902-3 Evidence of transitional stages is missing both in the living world and in the "Cambrian explosions" at Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies and at the Chengjiang site in China. It is only proper at this point that we demand hard evidence of transitional stages. To wait millions of years for it to appear is simply a scientism of the gaps. en Jan Zalasiewicz; Mark R. F. Williams Water in the Cosmos https://books.google.com/books?id=okxuBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT154 Ocean Worlds Oxford w:Oxford University Press 2014 978-0-19-967288-2 A few worlds may have made this giant leap, invented sex (or some equivalent), and produced planets with sponge-like organisms to filter-clean their seas as a precedent to the evolution of more complex life. Here and there, and likely very rarely, a few planets may have undergone their own Cambrian explosions. en Andrew H[erbert] Knoll In the Beginning? Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth new Princeton Science Library paperback Princeton, N.J.; Woodstock, Oxfordshire w:Princeton University Press 2015 8 https://books.google.com/books?id=OXIVBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA8 978-0-691-16553-0 [T]hese cliffs, cut over the millennia by the Kotuikan as it winds toward the Arctic Ocean, record one of Earth history's great turning points. As well as any rocks known anywhere, they document the remarkable diversification of animal life popularly known as the Cambrian Explosion. In the broadest possible sense, the Kotuikan cliffs record the beginnings of the modern world, a world in which animals swim, crawl, or walk beneath an atmosphere of breathable air. That's really what brought us here. en 2022-11-22 Donna Lu The real paleo diet: researchers find traces of world’s oldest meal in 550m-year-old fossil w:The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/23/the-real-paleo-diet-researchers-find-traces-of-worlds-oldest-meal-in-550m-year-old-fossil Brocks said the new study suggested the Ediacaran biota “already contained some of the creatures that gave rise to the [Cambrian] explosion, to the rise of modern animals”. The Cambrian explosion, also called the biological big bang, was a period about 538.8m years ago when almost all major animal groups started to appear in the fossil record. Translations the rapid appearance, around 541 million years ago, of most major animal phyla Arabic: ar انفجار كامبري Azerbaijani: az kembri partlayışı Basque: eu Kanbriarreko leherketa Catalan: ca explosió cambriana f Chinese: Hokkien: nan-hbl Cambria po̍k-hoat Mandarin: cmn 寒武纪大爆发 Hánwǔjì dàbàofā Czech: cs Kambrická exploze f Danish: da Kambriske Eksplosion Dutch: nl Cambrische explosie f Esperanto: eo kambria eksplodo Finnish: fi kambrikauden räjähdys French: fr explosion cambrienne f Galician: gl explosión cámbrica f German: de kambrische Explosion f, de kambrische Artenexplosion, de kambrische Radiation Hebrew: he הפיצוץ הקמבריוני Hindi: hi कैम्ब्रियाई विस्तार Hungarian: hu kambriumi robbanás Indonesian: id letusan Kambrium, id radiasi Kambrium Italian: it esplosione cambriana f Japanese: ja カンブリア爆発 Korean: ko 캄브리아기 폭발 Lithuanian: lt Kambro sprogimas Norwegian: Bokmål: nb den kambriske eksplosjon m Nynorsk: nn den kambriske eksplosjonen m Persian: fa انفجار کامبرین Polish: pl eksplozja kambryjska f Portuguese: pt explosão cambriana f, pt explosão do Cambriano f Romanian: ro explozia cambriană Russian: ru кембрийский взрыв m, ru взрыв скелетной фауны m Serbo-Croatian: sh Kambrijska eksplozija f, sh Камбријумска експлозија f Slovak: sk kambrická explózia Spanish: es explosión cámbrica f, es radiación evolutiva del Cámbrico f Swedish: sv kambriska explosionen Turkish: tr Kambriyen patlaması Ukrainian: uk кембрійський вибух m Vietnamese: vi bùng nổ kỷ Cambri Noun en by extension The rapid appearance of anything. en There has been a Cambrian explosion of cryptocurrencies. en W[illiam] Brian Arthur The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves London Allen Lane, Penguin Group 2009 978-1-84614-017-4 When we examined the detailed history of the evolution, we fond large gaps of time in which little happened at all. Then we saw the sudden appearance of a key circuit (an enabling technology) and quick use of this for further technologies. A full adder circuit might appear after say 32,000 steps; and 2-, 3-, and 4-bit adders fairly quickly after that. In other words, we found periods of quiescence, followed by miniature "Cambrian explosions" of rapid evolution. en w:Gary Hamel Gary Hamel on ‘Hacking Management 2.0’ https://www.saba.com/us/blogs/2011/11/16/gary-hamel-on-hacking-management-2-0/ Saba Software 16 November 2011 quoted in Marco Minghetti Foreword Collaborative Intelligence: Towards the Social Organization Newcastle upon Tyne Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014 xxix https://books.google.com/books?id=9coxBwAAQBAJ&pg=PR29 978-1-4438-6022-2 Before the Web, it was hard to imagine alternatives to management orthodoxy. But the Internet has spawned a Cambrian explosion of new organizational life forms—where coordination occurs without centralization, en w:Don Tapscott; Anthony D. Williams Five Principles for the Age of Networked Intelligence https://books.google.com/books?id=L41v_bFBkEMC&pg=PT35 Macrowikinomics: New Solutions for a Connected Planet paperback London Portfolio/Penguin 2012 part I (From Wikinomics to Macrowikinomics) 978-1-59184-428-0 The men and women of the Renaissance period likely had little inkling of the truly titanic changes that were unfolding around them, let alone the ability to predict where it would all end up. Nevertheless, many of their legacies remain with us today: the birth of modern nation-states; the expansion of political rights and freedoms; the rise of the university, the media, and the industrial corporation; and a Cambrian explosion of science, medicine, knowledge, and cultural expression. en w:Jan-Benedict Steenkamp The Cambrian Explosion of Brands Global Brand Strategy: World-wise Marketing in the Age of Branding London w:Palgrave Macmillan 2017 2 https://books.google.com/books?id=wSvVDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA2 10.1057/978-1-349-94994-6 978-1-349-94993-9 With the advent of mass media in the 1960s, immortalized in the TV series Mad Men, the pace of brand introduction, sophistication, and importance accelerated dramatically. The world has witnessed a "Cambrian explosion" of brands. en Spencer Kornhaber Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture? The Atlantic 2025-05-05 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/06/american-pop-culture-decline/682578/ 2151-9463 The internet has caused a Cambrian explosion of creative expression by allowing artists to execute and distribute their visions with unprecedented ease. https://web.archive.org/web/20260911072041/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/06/american-pop-culture-decline/682578/ 11 September 2026 References 1 en Evolutionary theory