News Finding: "In this study we've estimated that rates of both morphological and genetic evolution during the Cambrian explosion were five times faster than today -- quite rapid, but perfectly consistent with Darwin's theory of evolution."
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: "In this study we've estimated that rates of both morphological and genetic evolution during the Cambrian explosion were five times faster than today -- quite rapid, but perfectly consistent with Darwin's theory of evolution." Their modelling showed that moderately accelerated evolution was sufficient to explain the seemingly sudden appearance of many groups of advanced animals in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion. "It was during this Cambrian period that many of the most familiar traits associated with this group of animals evolved, like a hard exoskeleton, jointed legs, and compound (multi-faceted) eyes that are shared by all arthropods.
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 .