The Cambrian Period

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2005

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cambrian period when there was an explosion of life on Earth. In the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia in Canada, there is an outcrop of limestone shot through with a seam of fine dark shale. A sudden mudslide into shallow water some 550 million years ago means that a startling array of wonderful organisms has been preserved within it. Wide eyed creatures with tentacles below and spines on their backs, things like flattened rolls of carpet with a set of teeth at one end, squids with big lobster-like arms. There are thousands of them and they seem to testify to a time when evolution took a leap and life on this planet suddenly went from being small, simple and fairly rare to being large, complex, numerous and dizzyingly diverse. It happened in the Cambrian Period and it's known as the Cambrian Explosion.But if this is the great crucible of life on Earth, what could have caused it? How do the strange creatures relate to life as we see it now? And what does the Cambrian Explosion tell us about the nature of evolution?With Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology, Cambridge University; Richard Corfield, Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research, Open University; Jane Francis, Professor of Palaeoclimatology, University of Leeds.

Transcript

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0:49.1	Hello in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia in Canada
0:52.3	there's an outcrop of limestone shot through
0:54.8	with the seam of fine dark shale. A sudden mudslide into shallow water some 550 million
1:00.6	years ago means that a startling array of wonderful organisms has been preserved
1:05.2	within it.
1:06.2	Wide-eyed creatures with tentacles below and spines on their backs, things like flattened rows of carpet
1:11.6	with a set of teeth at one end, squids with big lobster like like and life on this planet suddenly went from being small, simple and fairly rare
1:24.0	to being large, complex, numerous and dizzyingly diverse.
1:27.0	It happened in the Cambrian period and it's known as the Cambrian explosion.
1:32.0	But if this is the great crucible of life on earth, what
1:35.5	could have caused it? And how do the strange creatures relate to life as we see it now? And what
1:40.8	does the Cumbrian explosion tell us about the nature of evolution.
1:44.4	With me to discuss the Cameron in the context of evolutionary science
	...

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