The Cambrian explosion was a sharp and sudden increase in the rate of evolution. About 542 million years ago, at the onset of the Cambrian Period, intense diversification resulted in more than 35 new animal phyla; however, new discoveries show that the “explosion” started roughly 575 million years ago, near the end of the Proterozoic Eon, with the Ediacara fauna. The biota rapidly diversified throughout the Cambrian and Ordovician periods as life-forms adapted to virtually all marine environments. In numbers of described marine species, fossils of trilobites dominate Cambrian rocks, whereas brachiopods (lamp shells) (lamp shells) predominate in strata from the Ordovician through the Permian Period.

The Permian extinction, at the end of the Paleozoic Era, eliminated such major invertebrate groups as the blastoids (blastoid) (an extinct group of echinoderms related to the modern starfish and sea lilies), fusulinids, and trilobites. Other major groups, which included the ammonoids, brachiopods (lamp shells), bryozoans (moss animal) (moss animals), corals, and crinoids (crinoid) (cuplike echinoderms with five or more feathery arms), were severely decimated but managed to survive. It has been estimated that as many as 95 percent of the marine invertebrate species perished during the late Permian Period. Extinction rates were much lower among vertebrates, both aquatic and terrestrial, and among plants. Causes of this extinction event remain unclear, but they may be related to the changing climate and exceptionally low sea levels of the time. Although of lesser magnitude, other important Paleozoic mass extinctions occurred at the end of the Ordovician Period and during the late Devonian Period.

Laurentia, a craton primarily made up of present-day North America and Greenland, was rotated 90° clockwise from its present orientation and sat astride the paleoequator during Cambrian times. Laurentia was separated from Gondwana by the Iapetus Ocean. The smaller Baltica craton was positioned within the Iapetus Ocean, lying to the south of Laurentia and just off the northern margin of Gondwana. Baltica was made up of much of Scandinavia and western Europe. To the east of Laurentia, the Siberian craton was positioned just south of the paleoequator between Laurentia and the western coast of Gondwana. Until the late Carboniferous Period, Siberia was rotated 180° from its present orientation.

While a portion of Gondwana was positioned at or near the South Pole, there is no evidence of glaciation during Cambrian time. While little is known about the finer details of the Cambrian climate, geologic evidence shows that the margins of all continents were flooded by shallow seas. It is in the rock formed within these shallow seas that the greatest explosion of life ever recorded occurred. By Ordovician time, part of Gondwana had begun to move over the South Pole. The distribution of extensive glacial deposits, which formed later in the Paleozoic, has been used to track the movement of parts of Gondwana over and around the South Pole.

Siberia, Baltica, and Laurentia also moved to new locations during the course of the Paleozoic. Siberia, essentially the large Asian portion of present-day Russia, was a separate continent during the early and middle Paleozoic, when it moved from equatorial to northern temperate latitudes. Baltica moved across the paleoequator from southern cool temperate latitudes into northern warm latitudes during the Paleozoic. It collided with and joined Laurentia during the early Devonian Period. The beginnings of such mountainous regions as the Appalachians, Caledonides, and Urals resulted from the Paleozoic collision of the lithospheric plates. By the end of the Paleozoic, continued tectonic plate movements had forced these cratons together to form the supercontinent of Pangea. Large areas of all continents were episodically inundated by shallow seas, with the greatest inundations occurring during the Ordovician and early Carboniferous (Mississippian (Mississippian Subperiod)) periods.

Paleozoic rocks are widely distributed on all continents. Most are of sedimentary (sedimentary rock) origin, and many show evidence of deposition in or near shallow oceans. Among the more useful guide fossils for correlation are trilobites (trilobite) (distinctive three-lobed marine arthropods), for Cambrian through Ordovician strata; graptolites (graptolite) (small colonial planktonic animals), for rocks dated from Ordovician through Silurian times; conodonts (conodont) (primitive chordates with tooth-shaped fossil remains), for Ordovician to Permian rocks; ammonoids (ammonoid) (widely distributed extinct mollusks (mollusk) resembling the modern pearly nautilus), for Devonian through Cretaceous strata; and fusulinids (fusulinid) (single-celled amoeba-like organisms with complex shells), for rocks dating from the Carboniferous through the Permian Period.