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It's not always an absolutely gobsmacking profusion of uncontrollably bizarre life, as occurred with what's aptly called the Cambrian Explosion, a period about 540 million years ago when evolution got extremely creative.

By the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of multicellular organisms about 540 million years ago, the ancestors of today’s ecdysozoans were already alive and varied in form and behavior, suggesting they arose even earlier.

The species was probably not the ecdysozoans’ common ancestor, the authors say, but the discovery adds to the diversity of life before the Cambrian explosion.

Although the species was probably not the common ancestor to all ecdysozoans, the authors note, the discovery contributes a significant addition to our understanding of the diversity of life before the so-called Cambrian explosion.

Think of it as the sequel to the more famous, earlier Cambrian explosion, which saw the rapid origin of many different kinds of animal bodies and groups of living things in the seas.