Rocks gathered along the Colorado River contained evidence of a bustling community of animals in an ancient sea.
Tiny bits of creatures that lived more than half a billion years ago are offering new insights into a critical turning point in the history of life on Earth.
The discovery does not come from the usual locales of major fossil finds, such as the badlands of the Dakotas, the high desert plateau of Patagonia in Argentina or the hills of Yunnan province in China.
Rather, the remains of crustaceans and mollusks were extracted from rocks in a place that is chock-full of fossils but often overlooked: the Grand Canyon.
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Kenneth Chang, a science reporter at The Times, covers NASA and the solar system, and research closer to Earth.
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