An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” offers a possible explanation for the Cambrian explosion, the greatest diversification event among living organisms ever seen in the history of life on Earth. A team led by Josh Williams, now a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, used sophisticated biogeochemical models to try to reproduce oxygen changes in the atmosphere just before that explosion concluding that it was the result of an out of the normal tectonic activity during the formation of the supercontinent Gondwana.