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Science 25 June 1999:
Vol. 284. no. 5423, pp. 2129 - 2137
DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5423.2129
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Early Animal Evolution: Emerging Views from Comparative Biology and Geology

Andrew H. Knoll, 1* Sean B. Carroll 2

The Cambrian appearance of fossils representing diverse phyla has long inspired hypotheses about possible genetic or environmental catalysts of early animal evolution. Only recently, however, have data begun to emerge that can resolve the sequence of genetic and morphological innovations, environmental events, and ecological interactions that collectively shaped Cambrian evolution. Assembly of the modern genetic tool kit for development and the initial divergence of major animal clades occurred during the Proterozoic Eon. Crown group morphologies diversified in the Cambrian through changes in the genetic regulatory networks that organize animal ontogeny. Cambrian radiation may have been triggered by environmental perturbation near the Proterozoic-Cambrian boundary and subsequently amplified by ecological interactions within reorganized ecosystems.

1 Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
2 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1525 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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