Cambrian Period
541-485 million years ago · Event
Animal life arrives with a bang: in a few tens of millions of years the seas fill with eyes, shells, legs and predators — trilobites, anomalocaridids, and the first fish. Nearly every animal body plan alive today first appears in Cambrian rocks.
On these timelines: The Age of Dinosaurs, Master
More from The Age of Dinosaurs
- Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction (66000000 BCE)
- Tyrannosaurus rex (68000000 BCE)
- Mesozoic Era (252000000 BCE)
- Paleozoic Era (541000000 BCE)
- Jurassic Period (201000000 BCE)
- Cretaceous Period (145000000 BCE)
- Triassic Period (252000000 BCE)
- Archaeopteryx and the first birds (150000000 BCE)
Around 541000000 BCE
- Cambrian Explosion (541000000 BCE)
- First fish, the earliest vertebrates (518000000 BCE)