Southwest China. Discovery of animal groups that weren’t supposed to exist yet — millions of years earlier than the timeline said was possible.

Every time paleontology does this it’s a little disorienting. The story of life on Earth keeps getting older, stranger, and more front-loaded than the previous model assumed.

“Lost world” is a press release word but the underlying finding is genuinely significant. The Cambrian explosion might be less of an explosion and more of a long fuse.