‘Often overlooked’: 540-million-year-old poop ‘revolution’ may be the source life as we know it

Poop could be responsible for the rapid diversification of life during the Cambrian Explosion 540 million years ago, per a new study. NATE LOPER - stock.adobe.com Is it the theory of evo-poo-tion? While poop may seem like a revolting subject, it could could also be responsible for life on earth thanks to a “fecal revolution” over half a billion years ago. This progression of man-ure was described in an excremental study published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. “Next to rising oxygen levels and other contributing factors, the importance of feces in ancient ecosystems is often overlooked,” study author Russell Bicknell, an evolutionary ecologist at Australia’s Flinders University, said in a statement. To understand the importance of scat, one must go back to the Cambrian Exp