动物起源和寒武纪大爆发是生命史上重要的演化创新事件。为展示相关领域的最新进展, 特组织主题为“动物起源和寒武纪大爆发”的论文专辑。作为专辑序言, 本文概述了动物起源和寒武纪大爆发领域的科学意义和当前研究趋势, 并简要介绍了本专辑的内容。专辑包含了来自13个研究单位共42位作者的12篇论文, 包括特约综述论文1篇和研究论文11篇。专辑不仅评述了相关领域的现状和未来发展趋势, 也展示了我国学者在该领域取得的部分新进展。这些进展涉及华南和华北数个特异埋藏化石库, 比如埃迪卡拉纪石板滩生物群、寒武纪宽川铺生物群和寒武纪凯里生物群等, 并涵盖了海绵动物、刺细胞动物、腕足动物、三叶虫和双瓣壳类节肢动物以及分类位置尚不明确的疑难动物化石等诸多类群。

The origin of animals and the Cambrian explosion are two significant biological events of evolutionary innovation during the life history. To highlight the recent progresses and provide new perspectives in this research field, we organized this the-matic issue entitled “origin of metazoans and the Cambrian explosion”. As the preface of this special issue, we herein re-viewed the significances and the development trends of this field, and then briefly summarized the progresses illustrated by this issue. The special issue collected 12 papers contributed by 42 authors from 13 universities and institutes, including 1 re-view paper and 11 research articles. These studies focused on several fossil Lagerst?tten from South and North China, such as the Ediacaran Shibantan biota, the Cambrian Kuanchuanpu and Kaili biotas, covering advances in a number of fossil ani-mal groups including sponges, cnidarians, brachiopods, trilobites and bivalved arthropods, as well as some problematic ani-mal fossils.