The Cambrian explosion is a grand challenge to science today and involves multidisciplinary study. This event is generally believed as a result of genetic innovations, environmental factors and ecological interactions, even though there are many conflicts on nature and timing of metazoan origins. The crux of the matter is that an entire roadmap of the evolution is missing to discern the biologi...

A well-preserved Cambrian section in the Zanskar Valley of northern India has previously been interpreted to record the transition from a passive to an active tectonic margin related to Cambrian–Ordovician orogenesis. This interpretation has been used to support the tectonostratigraphic interpretation of other successions across the Tethyan Himalaya. Our detailed paleoenvironmental analysis sig...

a r t i c l e i n f o The Early–Middle Cambrian Pioche Shale of Lincoln County, Nevada preserves a diverse array of soft-bodied ecdysozoans that are well-known from the Burgess Shale soft-bodied fauna of British Columbia, Canada. At Pioche certain genera occur both above and below the Middle Cambrian boundary, allowing a comparison of the nature of their preservation across this interval. In or...

The oldest annelid fossils are polychaetes from the Cambrian Period. They are representatives of the annelid stem group and thus vital in any discussion of how we polarize the evolution of the crown group. Here, we describe a fossil polychaete from the Early Cambrian Sirius Passet fauna, Pygocirrus butyricampum gen. et sp. nov., with structures identified as pygidial cirri, which are recorded f...

Whilst the "Cambrian Explosion" continues to attract much attention from a wide range of earth and life scientists, the detailed patterns exhibited by the terminal Proterozoic-Early Cambrian biotas remain unclear, for reasons of systematics, biostratigraphy and biogeography. In particular, recent changes in absolute dating of the Cambrian have refined the period of time that the fossil record m...

This study is predominantly about the differences in shale pore structure and controlling factors of gas content between Lower Silurian Cambrian from upper Yangtze plate, which are great significance to occurrence mechanism gas. The field emission scanning electron microscopy combined with Particles (Pores) Cracks Analysis System software, CO2/N2 adsorption high-pressure mercury injection poros...

A dramatic shift in microbial reefs occurred around the Ediacaran–Cambrian boundary. Here we describe changes composition, construction, and texture of Zavkhan Terrane Gobi-Altai Province, western Mongolia, during late Ediacaran early Cambrian. Stromatolites consisting peloids, micritic clots, homogeneous lime mud without calcified microbes (calcimicrobes) are characteristic upper (units 9 16A ...