The Cambrian explosion, and possibly its cause(s)?
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In general a sudden spike in diversity of animal groups found in the fossil record – for some reason a lot of new species that are widely different from one another started to show up around that time, much more than during any other period during earth’s history.
We still don’t have a concrete answer as to “why” we see the effects of Cambrian explosion in the fossils, there are only some theories. One possible option is called the edicarian garden hypothesis, which states that the Cambrian explosion started as a result of first ever predators appearing which kick-started an evolutionary arms race, another is bio sustainability concept that proposes that rising oxygen and calcium levels in the oceans allowed for higher diversity of species, and there are also the reduction hypotheses that pose that no sudden evolutionary spike was present but it’s just a result of environment being more friendly to fossilisation at the time allowing preservation of higher count of species.
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