Natural history Memes

The Cambrian period was basically evolution's awkward teenage phase. About 540 million years ago, life decided to go absolutely bonkers with body plans like it was on some prehistoric acid trip. These bizarre creatures—with their nonsensical spikes, random appendages, and "what were you thinking?" anatomical layouts—represent nature's wild experimentation before settling on more sensible designs. It's like finding your parents' embarrassing high school photos, except these are Earth's embarrassing baby pictures. Evolution was clearly throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. Spoiler alert: most of it didn't.