News Finding: New paper in Current Biology on rates of evolution during the Cambrian: 
Paper Finding: Clades characterized by major phenotypic innovations often exhibit higher rates of evolution initially (e.g., [42]); if this pattern characterized most metazoan phyla, rates in the Cambrian would be uniformly elevated .
News Context: New paper in Current Biology on rates of evolution during the Cambrian: 
Paper Context: Typical directional selection can increase phenotypic evolutionary rates by orders of magnitude over short timescales , and even conserved genomic regions can exhibit 10-fold differences in evolutionary rates in living sister lineages . While this study examined only arthropods, the patterns found here may be general across other metazoan groups, though broader taxonomic studies are required. Clades characterized by major phenotypic innovations often exhibit higher rates of evolution initially (e.g., [42]); if this pattern characterized most metazoan phyla, rates in the Cambrian would be uniformly elevated .