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Cambrian


For other uses, see Cambrian (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Cambria or Cumbria.
"Cambrian fauna" redirects here. For the first evolutionary fauna, see Evolutionary fauna § Cambrian fauna.

Cambrian
Earth in the middle of the Cambrian Period, c. 510 Ma
Chronology
Etymology
Name formalityFormal
Usage information
Celestial bodyEarth
Regional usageGlobal (ICS)
Time scale(s) usedICS Time Scale
Definition
Chronological unitPeriod
Stratigraphic unitSystem
First proposed byAdam Sedgwick, 1835
Time span formalityFormal
Lower boundary definitionAppearance of the Ichnofossil Treptichnus pedum
Lower boundary GSSPFortune Head section, Newfoundland, Canada
47°04′34″N 55°49′52″W / 47.0762°N 55.8310°W / 47.0762; -55.8310
Lower GSSP ratified1992[2]
Upper boundary definitionFAD of the Conodont Iapetognathus fluctivagus.
Upper boundary GSSPGreenpoint section, Green Point, Newfoundland, Canada
49°40′58″N 57°57′55″W / 49.6829°N 57.9653°W / 49.6829; -57.9653
Upper GSSP ratified2000[3]
Atmospheric and climatic data
Sea level above present dayRising steadily from 4 m to 90 m[4]

The Cambrian Period ( /ˈkæmbri.ən, ˈkeɪm-/ KAM-bree-ən, KAYM-; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon.[5] The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 485.4 mya.[6] Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux.

The period was established as "Cambrian series" by Adam Sedgwick,[5] who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for 'Cymru' (Wales), where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed.[7][8][9] Sedgwick identified the layer as part of his task, along with Roderick Murchison, to subdivide the large "Transition Series", although the two geologists disagreed for a while on the appropriate categorization.[5]

The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of lagerstätte sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, scientific understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some later periods.[10]

The Cambrian marked a profound change in life on Earth: prior to the Cambrian, the majority of living organisms on the whole were small, unicellular and simple (Ediacaran fauna and earlier Tonian Huainan biota being notable exceptions). Complex, multicellular organisms gradually became more common in the millions of years immediately preceding the Cambrian, but it was not until this period that mineralized – hence readily fossilized – organisms became common.[11]

The rapid diversification of lifeforms in the Cambrian, known as the Cambrian explosion, produced the first representatives of most modern animal phyla. Phylogenetic analysis has supported the view that before the Cambrian radiation, in the Cryogenian[12][13][14] or Tonian,[15] animals (metazoans) evolved monophyletically from a single common ancestor: flagellated colonial protists similar to modern choanoflagellates.[16] Although diverse life forms prospered in the oceans, the land is thought to have been comparatively barren – with nothing more complex than a microbial soil crust[17] and a few molluscs and arthropods (albeit not terrestrial) that emerged to browse on the microbial biofilm.[18]

By the end of the Cambrian, myriapods,[19][20] arachnids,[21] and hexapods[22] started adapting to the land, along with the first plants.[23][24] Most of the continents were probably dry and rocky due to a lack of vegetation. Shallow seas flanked the margins of several continents created during the breakup of the supercontinent Pannotia. The seas were relatively warm, and polar ice was absent for much of the period.

  1. ^ "Chart/Time Scale". stratigraphy.org. International Commission on Stratigraphy.
  2. ^ Brasier, Martin; Cowie, John; Taylor, Michael (March–June 1994). "Decision on the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary stratotype" (PDF). Episodes. 17. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
  3. ^ Cooper, Roger; Nowlan, Godfrey; Williams, S. H. (March 2001). "Global Stratotype Section and Point for base of the Ordovician System" (PDF). Episodes. 24 (1): 19–28. doi:10.18814/epiiugs/2001/v24i1/005. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
  4. ^ Haq, B. U.; Schutter, SR (2008). "A Chronology of Paleozoic Sea-Level Changes". Science. 322 (5898): 64–8. Bibcode:2008Sci...322...64H. doi:10.1126/science.1161648. PMID 18832639. S2CID 206514545.
  5. ^ a b c Howe 1911, p. 86.
  6. ^ "International Stratigraphic Chart" (PDF). International Commission on Stratigraphy. June 2023. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 July 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  7. ^ Sedgwick and R. I. Murchison (1835) "On the Silurian and Cambrian systems, exhibiting the order in which the older sedimentary strata succeed each other in England and Wales," Notices and Abstracts of Communications to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at the Dublin meeting, August 1835, pp. 59–61, in: Report of the Fifth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; held in Dublin in 1835 (1836). From p. 60: "Professor Sedgwick then described in descending order the groups of slate rocks, as they are seen in Wales and Cumberland. To the highest he gave the name of Upper Cambrian group. ... To the next inferior group he gave the name of Middle Cambrian. ... The Lower Cambrian group occupies the S.W. coast of Cærnarvonshire,"
  8. ^ Sedgwick, A. (1852). "On the classification and nomenclature of the Lower Paleozoic rocks of England and Wales". Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 8 (1–2): 136–138. doi:10.1144/GSL.JGS.1852.008.01-02.20. S2CID 130896939.
  9. ^ Chambers 21st Century Dictionary. Chambers Dictionary (Revised ed.). New Delhi: Allied Publishers. 2008. p. 203. ISBN 978-81-8424-329-1.
  10. ^ Orr, P. J.; Benton, M. J.; Briggs, D. E. G. (2003). "Post-Cambrian closure of the deep-water slope-basin taphonomic window". Geology. 31 (9): 769–772. Bibcode:2003Geo....31..769O. doi:10.1130/G19193.1.
  11. ^ Butterfield, N. J. (2007). "Macroevolution and macroecology through deep time". Palaeontology. 50 (1): 41–55. Bibcode:2007Palgy..50...41B. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2006.00613.x.
  12. ^ Love; Grosjean, Emmanuelle; Stalvies, Charlotte; Fike, David A.; Grotzinger, John P.; Bradley, Alexander S.; Kelly, Amy E.; Bhatia, Maya; Meredith, William; et al. (2009). "Fossil steroids record the appearance of Demospongiae during the Cryogenian period" (PDF). Nature. 457 (7230): 718–721. Bibcode:2009Natur.457..718L. doi:10.1038/nature07673. PMID 19194449. S2CID 4314662. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 May 2018. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  13. ^ Maloof, Adam C.; Rose, Catherine V.; Beach, Robert; Samuels, Bradley M.; Calmet, Claire C.; Erwin, Douglas H.; Poirier, Gerald R.; Yao, Nan; Simons, Frederik J. (17 August 2010). "Possible animal-body fossils in pre-Marinoan limestones from South Australia". Nature Geoscience. 3 (9): 653–659. Bibcode:2010NatGe...3..653M. doi:10.1038/ngeo934.
  14. ^ "Discovery of possible earliest animal life pushes back fossil record". 17 August 2010.
  15. ^ Kliman, Richard M. (14 April 2016). Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology. Academic Press. p. 251. ISBN 9780128004265.
  16. ^ Carr M, Leadbeater BS, Hassan R, Nelson M, Baldauf SL (October 2008). "Molecular phylogeny of choanoflagellates, the sister group to Metazoa". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 105 (43): 16641–6. Bibcode:2008PNAS..10516641C. doi:10.1073/pnas.0801667105. PMC 2575473. PMID 18922774.
  17. ^ Schieber et al. 2007, pp. 53–71.
  18. ^ Seilacher, A.; Hagadorn, J.W. (2010). "Early Molluscan evolution: evidence from the trace fossil-record" (PDF). PALAIOS (Submitted manuscript). 25 (9): 565–575. Bibcode:2010Palai..25..565S. doi:10.2110/palo.2009.p09-079r. S2CID 129360547. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
  19. ^ Collette, Gass & Hagadorn 2012.
  20. ^ Edgecombe, Gregory D.; Strullu-Derrien, Christine; Góral, Tomasz; Hetherington, Alexander J.; Thompson, Christine; Koch, Marcus (2020). "Aquatic stem group myriapods close a gap between molecular divergence dates and terrestrial fossil record". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117 (16): 8966–8972. Bibcode:2020PNAS..117.8966E. doi:10.1073/pnas.1920733117. PMC 7183169. PMID 32253305. S2CID 215408474.
  21. ^ Lozano-Fernandez, Jesus; Tanner, Alastair R.; Puttick, Mark N.; Vinther, Jakob; Edgecombe, Gregory D.; Pisani, Davide (2020). "A Cambrian–Ordovician Terrestrialization of Arachnids". Frontiers in Genetics. 11: 182. doi:10.3389/fgene.2020.00182. PMC 7078165. PMID 32218802.
  22. ^ Lozano-Fernandez, Jesus; Carton, Robert; Tanner, Alastair R.; Puttick, Mark N.; Blaxter, Mark; Vinther, Jakob; Olesen, Jørgen; Giribet, Gonzalo; Edgecombe, Gregory D.; Pisani, Davide (2016). "A molecular palaeobiological exploration of arthropod terrestrialization". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 371 (1699). doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0133. PMC 4920334. PMID 27325830.
  23. ^ De Vries, Jan; De Vries, Sophie; Fürst-Jansen, Janine M R. (2020). "Evo-physio: On stress responses and the earliest land plants". Journal of Experimental Botany. 71 (11): 3254–3269. doi:10.1093/jxb/eraa007. PMC 7289718. PMID 31922568.
  24. ^ Morris, Jennifer L.; Puttick, Mark N.; Clark, James W.; Edwards, Dianne; Kenrick, Paul; Pressel, Silvia; Wellman, Charles H.; Yang, Ziheng; Schneider, Harald; Donoghue, Philip C. J. (2018). "The timescale of early land plant evolution". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (10): E2274–E2283. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115E2274M. doi:10.1073/pnas.1719588115. PMC 5877938. PMID 29463716.

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