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Enlarge ImageVestiges. A fossil form of Ediacara called Fractofusus andersoni provides evidence of an ancient explosion of life.Credit: Bing Shen/Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [VIA SCIENCE] Researchers have uncovered what they think is a sudden diversification of life at least 30 million years before the Cambrian period, the time when most of the major living groups of animals emerged. If confirmed, the find reinforces the idea that major evolutionary innovations occurred in bursts. The main points of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which he carefully laid out in The Origin of Species 149 years ago, have stood the...