The Cambrian Period
When was it?
570 to 505 million years ago.
What was going on?
The cambrian explosion. The first hard-bodied creatures appear. Lots of Trilobites.
What were the continents like?
There were a couple of small continents, and one large one, known as Godwanaland.
What kind of life existed?
The Cambrian was another busy time for evolution, as multicellular forms of life diversified,
into many phyla -- including many that no longer exist. This diversification, known as the
"Cambrian explosion" is recorded in fossils in the Burgess Shale. Later in the Cambrian,
many of these phyla became extinct, and the predominant form of hard-bodied marine life was
the Trilobite.