Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Nautilus

    The Greatest Animal War

    by Brooke Borel Sep 18, 2014 3 minutes

    Battles fought 542 million years before today helped fuel a blast that brought humans and most animals into existence. The great Cambrian Explosion was a period of unprecedented one-upmanship. Beastly claws crushed through thin skin, and soft-bodied creatures evolved shells shaped like scythes, sickles, and shields.

    For about a billion years prior, the cells and genes that would later create animals were evolving in microscopic organisms who inhabited the oceans of Earth (see ). These essential molecular changes may only be inferred today because they’re not preserved in fossils. The earliest traces of animals, about 580 million years old, appear soft, with no sign of claws, teeth, limbs, or brains. Then, within 54 million years (a relative blink but still,

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Nautilus

    Nautilus7 min read
    The Part-Time Climate Scientist
    On a Wednesday in February 1938, Guy Stewart Callendar—a rangy, soft-spoken steam engineer, who had turned 40 just the week before—stood before a group of leading scientists, members of the United Kingdom’s Royal Meteorological Society. He had a bold
    Nautilus8 min read
    A Revolution in Time
    In the fall of 2020, I installed a municipal clock in Anchorage, Alaska. Although my clock was digital, it soon deviated from other timekeeping devices. Within a matter of days, the clock was hours ahead of the smartphones in people’s pockets. People
    Nautilus9 min read
    The Marine Biologist Who Dove Right In
    It’s 1969, in the middle of the Gulf of California. Above is a blazing hot sky; below, the blue sea stretches for miles in all directions, interrupted only by the presence of an oceanographic research ship. Aboard it a man walks to the railing, studi

    Related Books & Audiobooks