The Specials of June. The Paleozoic Era(The Cambrian Period)Cambrian Life

Prior to the Cambrian life was small and simple. In the Cambrian Period, prodigious change occured, all in the oceans, as the land remained barren. Except for enigmatic forms, all modernCambrian animalanimal phyla with a fossil record, except bryozoa, are represented in the Cambrian. Because some life became mineralized, the possibility of fossil formation greatly increased. Some phyla not represented in the Cambrian fossil record are nonetheless believed to have first appeared during this first period of the Paleozoic Era. Many extinct phyla with unknown relationships to other animals also appeared in the Cambrian. The ostensibly sudden appearance of very diverse faunas over a period of no more than a few tens of millions of years is called the Cambrian Explosion. A unique aspect of Cambrian is prevalence of lagerstätten, fossil sites exhibiting exceptional preservation, including preservation of soft tissue parts. The lagerstatten are paramount to science's understanding of the evolutionary origins of complex early organisms that contained the genetic building blocks of life on earth today.