By Yuan Ren For Mailonline
Published: 16:06 GMT, 11 March 2019 | Updated: 22:49 GMT, 11 March 2019
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New findings are challenging a long-held theory that the huge expansion in the animal kingdom 500 million years ago was triggered by a single surge of evolution.
Bursts of evolutionary activity may have increased the variety of animals and began millions of years earlier that thought.
Data also shows the episodes could have occurred over a longer time frame, and were more frequent than previously thought.
Bursts of evolutionary activity that increased the number and variety of animals began millions of years earlier that thought. This image shows researchers studying at a fossil site in Nambia
Geoscientists from the University of Edinburgh re-assessed the timeline of early animal evolution by analysing records of fossil discoveries and environmental change.
Until now, the Cambrian Explosion, which took place between 540 and 520 million years ago, was thought to have given rise to almost all the early ancestors of present-day animals.
Now the new research has shown that it was probably just one in a series of similar events, the first of which took place at least 571 million years ago during the late Ediacaran Period.
