Why did life forms first begin to get larger and what
advantage did this increase in size provide? UCLA biologists working with an
international team of scientists examined the earliest communities of large
multicellular organisms in the fossil record to help answer this question.
The life scientists used a novel application of modeling
techniques at a variety of scales to understand the scientific processes
operating in the deep sea 580 million years ago. The research reveals that an
increase in size provided access to nutrient-carrying ocean flow, giving an
advantage to multicellular eukaryotes that existed prior to the Cambrian
explosion of animal life, said David Jacobs, a professor of ecology and
evolutionary biology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science and senior
author of the research.