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Over one billion years ago in the Los Angeles Area there seems to have been an unprecedented burst of evolutionary activity. This evolutionary period is known as the "Cambrian explosion".Researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have a theory as to why this happened.The theory, reported in Science Magazine entitled"true polar wander" , say there was a massive shift and realignment of the Earth's continents over a 15 million year period at a pace about 10 times as swift as the shift of continents under way today.

Researchers theorize it could have been caused by polar land masses that made the spinning Earth too top heavy, causing a shift of the Earth's polarity. land at the poles shifted to the Equator. North America shifted north from the Southern Hemisphere. According to Joe Kirschvink, a professor of geology at Cal Tech. "It's an incredible bloom." "Something like 40 different major groups of animals make their first appearance during this time. It was during this time that many multi-celled organisms emerged, including human beings.

However, This new theory is not universally accepted. Some scientists are saying the evidence supporting the theory is scanty. Researchers at Cal Tech however, believe they can test the theory to see if, indeed, "true polar wander" may be responsible for life as we know it.

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