First animals

Study solves mystery of how first animals appeared on Earth

August 16, 2017

Figure 1: Time chart from 850 Myr ago to the present summarizing environmental, biomarker and fossil data and highlighting the position of the rise of algae.

Note break in time scale at the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary. a, Speculative trajectory of atmospheric oxygen (turquoise; percentage of present atmospheric level, PAL)³², and phosphorous concentrations in shales before (red circles) and…