WHEN LIFE EXPLODED

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In fact, some of prehistory's worst mass extinctions took place during the Cambrian itself, and they probably occurred for no obvious reason. Rather, just as the tiniest touch can cause a steeply angled sand pile to slide, so may a small evolutionary advance that gives one species a temporary advantage over another be enough to bring down an entire ecosystem. "These patterns of speciations and extinctions, avalanching across ecosystems and time," warns Kauffman, are to be found in every chaotic system--human and biological. "We are all part of the same pageant," as he puts it. Thus, even in this technological age, we may have more in common than we care to believe with the weird--and ultimately doomed--wonders that radiated so hopefully out of the Cambrian explosion.