Around half a billion years ago, in what is now the Yunnan Province of China, a tiny larva was trapped in mud. Hundreds of millions of years later, after the mud had long since become the black shales ...

Paleontologists have discovered that a three-eyed sea moth predator lived on Earth half a billion years ago ...

A tiny fossil of a sea creature that lived more than half a billion years ago sheds new light on the evolution of arthropods, the most species-rich and successful group of animals to inhabit Earth, ...

Erwin, Terry L. 2004. "The Biodiversity Question: How many species of terrestrial arthropods are there?" In Forest Canopies, 2nd Edition. Lowman, M. D. and Rrinker, H ...

Palaeontologists are helping resolve the evolution and ecology of Odaraia, a taco-shaped marine animal that lived during the Cambrian period. Fossils reveal Odaraia had mandibles. Palaeontologists are ...

Discoveries at a major new fossil site in Morocco suggest giant arthropods -- relatives of modern creatures including shrimps, insects and spiders -- dominated the seas 470 million years ago.

“The truth is that we’re all living with this vast diversity of arthropods and the majority of them are not overtly harmful,” study coauthor Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences ...

Most of the fossils that we find in Earth's crust are preserved in sedimentary rock, where layers of mineral cover an organism and, over eons, harden into stone, dead beastie impression and all. But ...