Five hundred million years ago, the Earth saw a huge jump in the diversification of life forms called the Cambrian Explosion.
A new study found that the area of the Grand Canyon was a hot spot for life.
During this time much of the North American continent was submerged underwater because there were no ice caps.
And because tectonic plates cause continents to move, the Grand Canyon area was just below the equator at the time of the Cambrian explosion.
Giovanni Mussini is an Italian Ph.D. student at Cambridge University and study author. While he collected dozens of samples, two in particular held thousands of fossils each that were about the size of your hand.
“This seems to suggest that actually, you know that there was quite a lot of animal life going on, and this is also consistent with other lines of evidence from the Grand Canyon more broadly," he said.
Mussini said the exposed layers of rock going back billions of years makes it an excellent place for researchers to look for fossils.
The paper was published in the journal Science Advances.
