How we came to be: Scientists get first look at the evolution of early complex animals

Newly discovered fossils have given scientists their first real glimpse of when Earth made a crucial transition from plants and unrecognizably simple animals to the complex creatures that took over the world and would eventually lead to us. More than 700 fossils found in southwestern China’s Yunnan province offer a window into life from 539 million years ago, during the waning end of the Ediacaran period, a time of simple but strange animals that lived two-dimensionally in the oceans, never goi