500-million-year-old fossil helps fill a strange gap in our record of life on Earth

By Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Post-doctoral researcher in Palaeobiology, Flinders University
Julien Kimmig, Head of Palaeontology Division at the Natural History Museum Karlsruhe

Roughly 500 million years ago, a strange event in the evolution of life on Earth seems to have taken place.

The known fossil record from this time, which falls within the Cambrian period, contains a missing chapter. Palaeontologists refer to it as the “Furongian gap”. And it’s striking because there is an explosion of biodiversity within the fossil record both immediately before and after it.

This decline has been considered evidence for a real biological crisis – one driven by environmental instability,…

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