The Cambrian "explosion" of multicellular animal life is one of the most significant evolutionary events in Earth's history. But what was it that jolted the Earth system enough to prompt the evolution ...

A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo challenges a long-standing assumption about ...

In 1998, Shuhai Xiao and colleagues reported finding thousands of 600 million year old embryo microfossils in the Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation, a fossil site near Weng'an, South China. But ...

"This project grew from a Pardee keynote symposium ('Neoproterozoic geobiology : fossils, clocks, isotopes, and rocks') held at the 2003 Geological Society of America annual meeting in Seattle"--Pref.

More than half a billion years ago on a frigid, ice-covered Earth, glaciers stirred up ingredients for complex life by bulldozing land minerals and then depositing them in the ocean, according to a ...