Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian Eraon the road in the LV.
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The first forms of life were simple single celled organisms, called cyano-bacteria. They were the only life on Earth for about a billion years. Then, in Cambrian period (543 million years ago), life exploded with lots of different types of living creatures. |
 Anamalocaris All pictures on this page from "Planet of Life" video series produced by Discovery Channel and NHK. Excellent series with great descriptions and superb animation. |
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The most amazing of the Cambrian creatures was the Anamalocaris. It was a hunter, and may be the cause of so many other creatures, because they had to find ways to escape being eaten by Anamaolcaris. Some scientists believe that Anamalocaris liked to eat trilobytes. |
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Opabinia was a very strange looking creature. |
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Halucigenia may have survived extinction for a while because of the spikes all over its body. |
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The Pikaia was very important, because it was the first creature to have something like a backbone. It was about 2-4 inches long, and looked like a swimming worm. Click here to see a movie about the evolution of the backbone from humans back to pikaia. (2.3mb) |
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In the Ordovician period (500 million years ago), the first kinds of creatures that would later lead to fish developed. The Silurian period (440 million years ago) was important because the first animals with jaws appeared. |
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Resources |
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Paleontologist Simon Conway Morris provides a guided tour of the world's richest treasure trove of fossils--a fantastically rich deposit of bizarre and bewildering Cambrain fossils, located in Western Canada. 4 plates. 90 linecuts. |
One of the the foremost authorities in paleontology today, and certainly the most prolific author on the development of life on earth, Stephen Jay Gould turns his attention to the most important place on earth for the study of the first animals. |
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Try
out some of these recommendations for your own learning
activities.
The
Crucible of Creation : The Burgess Shale and the Rise of
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Wonderful
Life : The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History