In a new study, scientists have suggested that the ancestors of many species of modern animals lived in
The Cambrian explosion, which occurred 500 million years ago, led to the rapid spread of bilateral species. These include almost 99% of the described animal species, including humans.
The 518-million-year-old Chengjiang biota is one ofplaces where fossils of species known to science are found. It's located in Yunnan, southwest China, and experts have found more than 250 animals, including various worms, arthropods (ancestors of living shrimp, insects, spiders, scorpions) and even the earliest vertebrates (ancestors of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals).
In a new study, scientists found thatthis environment was shallow and rich in nutrients. It also suffered several times from flooding due to rainfall. Scientists believe that unstable environmental stressors in China contributed to the adaptation and spread of the ancestors of modern animals.
The discovery of the delta environment has shed new light onreasons for the flourishing of Cambrian bilateral animal-dominated marine communities. This also explains the exceptional preservation of the soft tissues of the found species.
Xiaoya Ma, a paleobiologist at the University of Exeter, senior author of the study
Now this area is on land in the mountainous province of Yunnan. But the study of rock core samples indicates floods in the past.
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