title: Nipping the Cambrian "explosion" in the bud?
abstract: In recent years, two schools of thought have emerged with regard to the Cambrian "explosion". One argues that it was very quick, with phyla tumbling into existence in a virtual geological instant. The other view has a more relaxed temporal perspective. It looks to slow aeons of cryptic metazoan history, which led to a final breakthrough in the Cambrian, not in evolution but of fossilization potential. Yet both views have serious difficulties. Now, in a recent issue of Biological Reviews, Graham Budd and Sören Jensen(1) argue for a third way. In an intriguing blend of functional morphology, the fossil record and cladistic thinking, they suggest that the assembly of metazoan bodyplans took place in a surprisingly straightforward manner.
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK. sc113@esc.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: S C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Morris
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005580:Fossils; D008954:Models, Biological; D010802:Phylogeny; D010933:Plankton; D010944:Plants