Cambrian

Definitions: Cambrian

Cambrian

Adjective

1. Of or relating to or characteristic of Wales or its people or their language; "the Welsh coast"; "Welsh syntax".

Noun

1. From 500 million to about 544 million years ago; marine invertebrates.

2. A native or resident of Wales.

Date "Cambrian" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1991. (references)

Specialty Definitions: Cambrian

Domain	Definitions
Literature	Cambrian Pertaining to Wales; Welsh. (See above.) "The Cambrian mountains, like far clouds, That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise." Thomson: Spring, 961-62. Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
Mining	The oldest of the systems into which the Paleozoic stratified rocks are divided; also, the corresponding oldest period of the Paleozoic era. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Cambrian

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

This period is part of the

Paleozoic era.

Cambrian

Ordovician

Silurian

Devonian

Carboniferous

Permian

The Cambrian is a geologic period that began around 542 million years ago (see below) and ended about 490 million years ago. The Cambrian Period is the earliest period in whose rocks large numerous large, distinctly-fossilizable multicellular organisms more complex than sponges or medusoids are found. During this time, roughly fifty separate major groups of organisms or "phyla" (including almost all the basic body plans of modern animals) emerged suddenly without evident precursors. This radiation of animal phyla is referred to as the Cambrian explosion.

'Cambrian' naming

'Cambria' is the Roman name for Wales, which has areas of Cambrian-age rocks investigated by Adam Sedgwick in the 1830s. Eventually as the stratigraphic series was filled out, the youngest "Cambrian" came to overlap the oldest parts of the 'Silurian' sequence of strata,that had been identified by Sir Roderick Murchison. In 1879, Charles Lapworth defined an 'Ordovician' period that included the overlapping beds.

Thus the Cambrian Period follows the Neoproterozoic and is followed by the Ordovician Period. The Cambrian is classically divided into three stages -- the Lower, Middle, and Upper Cambrian. The lower boundary of the Cambrian was traditionally set at the earliest appearance of early arthropods known as trilobites and of primitive reef forming animals known as archeocyathids. The end of the Cambrian period was eventually set at a fairly definite faunal change now identified as an extinction event.

Cambrian dating

The time range has classically been thought to have been from about 500 million years before the present to about 570 million years before the present. Fossil discoveries and radioactive dating in the last quarter of the 20th Century have called these dates into some question. Inconsistencies in dates of as much 20 million years between authors are common. Framing dates of ca 545 to 490 mya were proposed by the International Subcommission on Global Stratigraphy as recently as 2002.

A more precise date 542 million years (plus or minus 300,000 years) for the extinction event at the beginning of the Cambrian has recently been submitted. The rationale for this precise dating is interesting in itself, as an example of palaeological deductive reasoning. Exactly at the Cambrian boundary there is a marked fall in the abundance of carbon-13, a 'reverse spike' that palaeontologists call an 'excursion', It is so widespread that it is the best indicator of the position of the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary in stratigraphic sequences of roughly this age. One of the places that this well-established carbon-13 excursion occurs is in Oman. J. E. Amthor et al., 'Extinction of Cloudinia and Namacalathus at the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary in Oman.' (in Geology v. 31 (2003), pp 431-434) describe the evidence from Oman that the carbon-isotope excursion relates to a mass extinction: the disappearance of distinctive fossils from the latest pre-Cambrian coincides exactly with the carbon anomaly. Luckily, in the Oman sequence, so too does a volcanic ash horizon, from which zircons provide a very precise age of 542±0.3 mya, calculated on the decay rate of uranium to lead. This newly precise date tallies with the less precise dates for the carbon-13 anomaly, derived from sequences in Siberia and Namibia. It is presented here as likely to become accepted as the definitive age for the start of the Phanerozoic.

Report on the Amthor et al. paper in Geology 2003.

Cambrian subdivisions

A radiometric date from New Brunswick puts the end of the first stage of the Cambrian around 511 million years. This leaves only 21 million years for the other two periods of the Cambrian.

The Cambrian is usually broken into Lower (Caerfai or Waucoban), Middle (St Davids or ALbertian) and Upper (Merioneth or Croixan) subdivisions. The faunal stages from youngest to oldest are:

Franconian/Trempealeauan/Dolgellian (Upper)
Dresbachian/Maentwrogian (Upper)
Solvan (Middle), Menevian (Middle)
Toyonian/Lenian/Botomian (Lower)
Atdabanian (Lower)
Tommatian (Lower)

Cambrian palaeogeography

The Cambrian continents are thought to have resulted from the breakup of a Neoproterozoic supercontinent called Rodinia. It is thought that Cambrian climates were significantly warmer than those of preceding times which experienced extensive ice ages discussed as the Varanger glaciation. Continental motion rates in the Cambrian may have been anomalously high. It is difficult to describe continental motions verbally. Time sequenced maps of paleo-continents and other major geologic features are called paleomaps and are available at several Internet sites. One such site is http://www.scotese.com/

Cambrian fauna

Aside from a few enigmatic forms that may or may not represent animals, all modern Animal phyla except bryozoa appear to have representatives in the Cambrian and most except sponges seem to have originated just after or just before the start of the Cambrian. Many extinct phyla and odd animals that have unclear relationships to other animals also appear in the Cambrian. The apparent sudden appearance of very diverse faunas no more than a few tens of millions of years is referred to as the Cambrian Explosion. The best studied sites where soft parts of organisms have fossilized, are in the Burgess shale of British Columbia. They represent strata from the middle Cambrian and provide us with a wealth of information on early animal diversity. Similar faunas have subsequently been found in a number of other places -- most importantly in very Early Cambrian shales in China's Yunnan Province (see Maotianshan shales). Fairly extensive preCambrian Ediacarian faunas have been identified in the past 50 years, but their relationships to Cambrian forms are quite obscure.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Cambrian."

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Synonyms: Cambrian

Synonyms: Cambrian period (n), Welsh (n), Welshman (n). (additional references)

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Synonyms within Context: Cambrian

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Inhabitant	Aboriginal, American, Caledonian, Cambrian, Canadian, Canuck, downeaster, Scot, Scotchman, Hibernian, Irishman, Welshman, Uncle Sam, Yankee, Brother Jonathan.
Oldness	Precambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian,
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

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Crosswords: Cambrian

English words defined with "Cambrian": Calciferous epoch, Cambrian period, Canadian period, conodont, Cumbrian system ♦ Harlech group ♦ Lingula flags, Longmynd rocks ♦ Potsdam group ♦ Taconic. (references)

Specialty definitions using "Cambrian": Bliss sandstone ♦ Cambrian Series, cement deposit, colored slates, Comleyan ♦ Leopard stone ♦ Menevian, mountain brown ore ♦ Phanerozoic, Precambrian shield ♦ Railways. (references)

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Commercial Usage: Cambrian

Domain	Title
Books	Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI (reference) Cambrian of the British Isles, Norden, and Spitsbergen, (reference) Cambrian of the New World, (reference) Morphology, Ontogeny, and Life Habit of Agnostus Pisiformis from the Upper Cambrian of Sweden (reference) The Cambrian Explosion (reference) (more book examples)

Periodicals	Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies (reference) (more periodical examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Image Slideshow: Cambrian

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Usage Frequency: Cambrian

"Cambrian" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 54.94% of the time. "Cambrian" is used about 253 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (proper)	54.94%	139	26,913
Adjective (general or positive)	44.66%	113	30,464
Noun (singular)	0.4%	1	339,140
Total	100.00%	253	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expression: Cambrian

Expressions using "Cambrian": Cambrian Park ♦ Cambrian period. Additional references.
Hypenated Usage
	Ending with "Cambrian": Pre-cambrian.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Cambrian

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day
cambrian college	155
cambrian credit union	84
cambrian	63
cambrian period	23
cambrian explosion	17
cambrian college sudbury	11
cambrian district school	11
cambrian ridge	6
cambrian era	5
cambrian pre	4
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translations: Cambrian

Language		Translations for "Cambrian"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		I Uellsit (cymric, welsh). (various references)

Bulgarian		Камбрийски, Уелски, �'алийски. (various references)

French		cambrien. (various references)

German		cambrisches System. (various references)

Hungarian		Walesi (bardic, cymric, welsh). (various references)

Italian		cambriano. (various references)

Japanese Kanji		カンジダ膣炎 (border, Cambodia, campaign, camphor, candidal vaginitis, cantabile, cantaloupe, cantata, canvas, canzone, cedilla, cheat, comma, company, company economist, company magazine, company paper, company union, conversation, country, country and western, country club, country music, country risk, country wear, cunning, fund raising, Kant, school, torch, vaginal yeast infection). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		カンブリア . (various references)

Manx		Cymragh, Cambrianagh. (various references)

Pig Latin		ambriancay.(various references)

Portuguese		câmbrico, Galês (cymric, taffy, welsh, welshman). (various references)

Russian		Кембрийский. (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		velški (welsh). (various references)

Spanish		cambriano. (various references)

Swedish		Kambrisk. (various references)

Turkish		Paleozik Devrin Ýlk Dönemi, Kambriyum'a Ait, Galli Kimse, Galler Ülkesi Ýle Ýlgili. (various references)

Ukranian		Кембрійський Період, Кембрійський, �'аллі�"ць. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Misspellings: Cambrian

Misspellings
	"Cambrian" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Cambien, cambrain, Camranh, Chambrin, Chambrun, Cimbrone, Cmwbran, Kamarina. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Anagrams: Cambrian

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-b-c-i-m-n-r"
	-1 letter: carabin.
	-2 letters: acinar, airman, ambari, arabic, arnica, barman, cabman, caiman, cambia, carina, carman, crania, maniac, marina.
	-3 letters: abaci, acari, amain, amnia, amnic, anima, bairn, baric, brain, cabin, cairn, inarm, mania, manic, maria, mbira, micra, naira, naric, rabic.
	-4 letters: abri, airn, amia, amin, amir, aria, bani, barm, barn, bima, bran, brim, brin, cain, carb, carn, crab, cram, crib, iamb, maar, main, mair, mana, marc, mica, mina, narc, raia, rain, rami, rani.
	-5 letters: aba, aim, ain, air, ama, ami, ana, ani, arb, arc, arm, baa, bam, ban, bar, bin, bra, cab, cam, can, car, mac, man, mar, mib, mir, nab, nam, nib, nim, ram, ran, ria, rib, rim, rin.
	Words containing the letters "a-a-b-c-i-m-n-r"
	+1 letter: carbamino.
	+3 letters: chamberlain.
	+4 letters: cabinetmaker, chamberlains, incomparable, incomparably, microbalance.
	+5 letters: antimicrobial, cabinetmakers, combinatorial, lamellibranch, microbalances, rhabdomancies, unreclaimable.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.