If so, the fossils would validate the widely held view that the major evolutionary diversification of animals already had occurred prior to the Cambrian period where a explosion of metazoan life - forms apparently occurred. (fossilmuseum.net)
Assembly of phylogenetic data from the earliest Triassic shows that prolonged and widespread anoxic intervals indeed promoted morphological novelty in soft - bodied benthos, which then provides the ancestral stock for subsequently skeletonised lineages to appear as innovations once oxic conditions became widespread and stable, so in turn promoting major evolutionary diversification. (royalsociety.org)
This fossil assemblage, newly named the Daohugou Biota after a village near one of the major localities in Inner Mongolia, China, dates from a time when many important vertebrate groups, including our own group, mammals, were undergoing evolutionary diversification. (sciencedaily.com)