[3] This evolutionary event is believed to have occurred some 33 million years earlier than the Cambrian explosion, which had been long thought to be when complex life started on Earth.
Scientists are still unsure of the full extent behind the development of the Avalon explosion,[3] which resulted in a rapid increase in metazoan biodiversity, including the first appearance of some extant infrakingdoms/superphyla such as cnidarians and bilaterians.
[3] Charles Darwin predicted a time of ecological growth before the Cambrian Period, but there was no evidence to support it until the Avalon explosion was proposed in 2008 by Virginia Tech paleontologists after analysis of the morphological space change in several Ediacaran assemblages.
There were over 270 species defined,[10] with 50 different morphological characteristics categories, many of whose anatomical structures had to be inferred with fossils and casts.
[11] Animals at this time developed bilateral symmetry with a clear anterior and posterior side, which included species like Spriggina, Charniodiscus and Yorgia.