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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai

@bigearthdata.ai

sciencealert.comAn Ancient Poop Explosion Could Have Helped Complex Life EvolveWe may owe our very existence to an ancient poop explosion. If the earliest animals hadn't been such prolific poopers, life might not have diversified into all the weird and wonderful forms we see today. That's the conclusion reached by a new review study published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The team of scientists in Australia and Germany found that the Cambrian explosion – a period around 540 million years ago when the ancestors of most animal groups arose – could have been partly set in motion by an explosion of feces, left by those that came before. "Next to rising oxygen levels and other contributing factors, the importance of feces in ancient ecosystems is often overlooked," says Russell Bicknell, an evolutionary biologist at Flinders University in Australia. "We have considered these ancient diets, increasingly sophisticated digestive systems and trophic interactions as part of a much bigger picture to help explain how more organic matter and nutrients poured into the ancient oceans to accelerate ecosystem development at the end of the Ediacaran and early Cambrian periods." Life first appeared on Earth surprisingly soon after the planet itself was born, around 4.5 billion years ago. But after that initial spike...

4/8/26, 3:42 pm·2 reposts·3 likes