Earth & Environment - Monday, August 10, 2009 4:00 - 0 Comments

In African rocks, traces of evolutionary blast

UNC marine geologist Justin Ries in the Zebra River Valley, southern Namibia. The Nama Group carbonates, which contain sulfur isotopic signatures suggesting that low marine sulfate and low atmospheric oxygen conditions persisted up until the Cambrian Explosion, loom in the background. (Credit: Gordon Love)

UNC CHAPEL HILL (US)—New research has opened the door on what some consider to be the greatest event in the history of animal life: a massive evolutionary jumpstart during the Cambrian Explosion half a billion years ago. Continue…