The Cambrian Explosion saw an incredible diversity ... external skeletons known as arthropods—the ancestors of insects, spiders, and crustaceans. These toughened-up creatures represented a ...

The growth and lifespan of Parvancorina minchami, small anchor-shaped animals that lived on the seafloor about 550 million ...

All animal evolution for the last half billion years has come from tinkering with these Cambrian body plans. Then, between about 570 and 530 million years ago, another burst of diversification ...

and crustaceans; and scalidophora, an eclectic group of small, scaly marine creatures. "Like many modern-day animal groups, ecdysozoans were prevalent in the Cambrian fossil record and we can see ...

Around 50% of the fossils found in Chengjiang are arthropods, a group that now includes insects, spiders, centipedes and crustaceans. More than 75% of all animals today are arthropods. F. protensa and ...