News Finding: "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 Finding: These findings also directly answer a powerful argument for a lengthy Precambrian phylogenetic fuse.
News Context: 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. We even find the first appearance in the fossil record of the antenna that insects, millipedes and lobsters all have, and the earliest biting jaws."
Paper Context: The congruence of the morphological pattern with the molecular pattern suggests that the morphological pattern is biologically meaningful rather than artifactual. These findings also directly answer a powerful argument for a lengthy Precambrian phylogenetic fuse. One of the few Table S2 ).