Open and Knit Together by Oxygen

Like in ekko, there are incisions on the Earth made by massive geological processes. Geologists have read these and have concluded that a worldwide event altered the planet s surface. This geological event was also a chemical event. Soon after, a profusion of fossils filled the rocks. This biological event was also a chemical event. The common denominator of chemistry connects the geology to the biology. 

The geological event provided chemicals that life used in new ways especially oxygen, phosphorous, and calcium, resulting in new energy, shells, and signals for life. 

This hypothesis is that chemical availability drove the evolution of life, and that the periodic table shaped the timing of life s greatest expansion. 

The expansion was first glimpsed and dated during the fossil-hunting heyday of Victorian England. Fossils were dug up in the 600-million-year-old rocks found in Wales. Because Latin sounds more impressive than English, these were called the Cambrian rocks, after the Latin word for Wales, Cambria. But, curiously, they found no fossils in older rocks. 

The English fossil hunters quickly came across this mysterious pattern in all their collections. Complexity does not gradually ramp up, but aU sorts of life forms suddenly appear. The first of these are unlike anything we ve seen, bulbous and elongated, spindly and plated, spoked and spiky. The horns, stalks, and armor on these creatures outshine even the imagination of Guillermo del Toro (director of Pan s Labyrinth). 

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