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At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record

The certain fossil record of animals begins around 540 million years ago, close to the base of the Cambrian Period. A series of extraordinary discoveries starting over 100 years ago with Walcott’s discovery of the Burgess Shale has accelerated in the last thirty years or so with the description of e...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Budd, Graham E
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Bentham Science Publishers 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3861885/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24396267
http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/13892029113149990011
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author Budd, Graham E
author_facet Budd, Graham E
author_sort Budd, Graham E
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description The certain fossil record of animals begins around 540 million years ago, close to the base of the Cambrian Period. A series of extraordinary discoveries starting over 100 years ago with Walcott’s discovery of the Burgess Shale has accelerated in the last thirty years or so with the description of exceptionally-preserved Cambrian fossils from around the world. Such deposits of “Burgess Shale Type” have been recently complemented by other types of exceptional preservation. Together with a remarkable growth in knowledge about the environments that these early animals lived in, these discoveries have long exerted a fascination and strong influence on views on the origins of animals, and indeed, the nature of evolution itself. Attention is now shifting to the period of time just before animals become common, at the base of the Cambrian and in the preceding Ediacaran Period. Remarkable though the Burgess Shale deposits have been, a substantial gap still exists in our knowledge of the earliest animals. Nevertheless, the fossils from this most remarkable period of evolutionary history continue to exert a strong influence on many aspects of animal evolution, not least recent theories about developmental evolution.
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spelling pubmed-38618852014-03-01 At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record Budd, Graham E Curr Genomics Article The certain fossil record of animals begins around 540 million years ago, close to the base of the Cambrian Period. A series of extraordinary discoveries starting over 100 years ago with Walcott’s discovery of the Burgess Shale has accelerated in the last thirty years or so with the description of exceptionally-preserved Cambrian fossils from around the world. Such deposits of “Burgess Shale Type” have been recently complemented by other types of exceptional preservation. Together with a remarkable growth in knowledge about the environments that these early animals lived in, these discoveries have long exerted a fascination and strong influence on views on the origins of animals, and indeed, the nature of evolution itself. Attention is now shifting to the period of time just before animals become common, at the base of the Cambrian and in the preceding Ediacaran Period. Remarkable though the Burgess Shale deposits have been, a substantial gap still exists in our knowledge of the earliest animals. Nevertheless, the fossils from this most remarkable period of evolutionary history continue to exert a strong influence on many aspects of animal evolution, not least recent theories about developmental evolution. Bentham Science Publishers 2013-09 2013-09 /pmc/articles/PMC3861885/ /pubmed/24396267 http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/13892029113149990011 Text en ©2013 Bentham Science Publishers http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Article
Budd, Graham E
At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record
title At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record
title_full At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record
title_fullStr At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record
title_full_unstemmed At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record
title_short At the Origin of Animals: The Revolutionary Cambrian Fossil Record
title_sort at the origin of animals: the revolutionary cambrian fossil record
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3861885/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24396267
http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/13892029113149990011
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