Jay Novella

Always wanted to say that.

If so, in fact, we see a proverbial explosion, right?

So, right, I like, you know what I like?

Because I like the Cambrian fossil, the fossil record in the Cambrian explosion era is like fireworks, right?

There's lots of oohs and ahhs.

But the pre-Cambrian, or specifically the Ediacaran period, is where a lot of the, like the fuse was burning, right?

There was a lot of setting up happening there.

And it's so frustratingly hard to see what was going on there.

So how do we shed more light on this period of evolution?

One way is to look at other fossil types, right?

Something other than these body fossils, if that's what you want to call them.

Something other than those body fossils, which are just too rare at that time.

So, and then what comes in here, Steve?

So trace fossils, right?

Yeah, right.

But those are still just too rare.

And it's definitely outside the scope of this study.

So they were focusing on trace fossils.

And so these are, in a sense, and we've mentioned them a few times on the show, trace fossils are essentially, in a lot of ways, fossilized behaviors or activities, if you will, right?

These are the fossils that don't tell us how the creature looked, but what the creature did.