Oh, the Cambrian Can!
So I wrote song parody about the Cambrian period. It’s pretty obvious what song I’m parodying.
What geologic period
Could change a small array
To nearly all the metazoan phyla found today?
The Cambrian…
Oh, the Cambrian can!
The Cambrian can with its increased O2 levels
and diversity.
When did early creatures
Develop shells and bones?
And claws and eyes to fossilise and be preserved in stone?
The Cambrian…
Oh, the Cambrian can!
The Cambrian can with its explosion of life
and all its predators
Within the Cambrian,
the major body plans
of animals all got their start-a…
They’re well preserved in Cambrian strata…
From Arthropoda to Chordata!
Fossil beds from Chengjiang
And the Burgess Shale
Excellently preserve all the claws and plates and tails
from the Cambrian,
Oh, the Cambrian can
The Cambrian can with its fossil lagerstaaten
speak to us through time
The Cambrian had this!
Anomalocaris!
What a strange big shrimpy fella,
with trilobites and Haikouella…
and Opabinia and Marella!
What geologic period
could could take the Cambrian’s life?
Wipe it out and replace it with orthocones and strife?
the Ordovician
The Ordovician can
But everyone knows scorpions and jawless fish are
not as good as trilobites
Ostracoderms and land plants just can’t beat
the Cambrian fauna, you know that’s right
That silly Ordovician ends in one big pointless
mass extinction anyway
Research team finds new explanation for Cambrian explosion
(PhysOrg.com) — For hundreds of years, researchers from many branches of science have sought to explain the veritable explosion in diversity in animal organisms that started approximately 541 million years ago here on planet Earth. Known as the Cambrian period, it was the time, according to fossil evidence, when life evolved from simple one celled organisms, to creatures that had multiple cells with varied functions. Now, new evidence by a team of biologists, paleobiologists and ecologists suggests that the sudden explosion of new life forms may not have been so sudden after all. In their paper published in Science, the teams says that it appears likely that most of the new life forms that show up in fossil finds, were well on their way to development before the Cambrian period and that many of them, by their behaviors, may have helped pave the way for others.
