The Cambrian Period was the first geological period of the Paleozoic era, lasting from 541 million to 485.4 million years ago. This time in earth’s history witnessed an explosion in the appearance of multicellular organisms like those represented by these LEGO sea creatures built by Luis Peña. Each one is a prehistoric work of art worthy of display in a museum.
Great museums like the American Museum of Natural History in New York City include educational displays that span the entire history of life on earth, from samples of banded iron (chemical evidence of early lifeforms such as stromatolites) to dioramas of creatures from the Cambrian half a billion years ago to the Holocene today. But you don’t have to travel to a museum in a far-off city to see great tableaus that illustrate early life on our planet — just check out this colorful scene built in LEGO by Luis Peña. Luis’s scene features an ammonite and sea jelly bobbing along in the warm current above a trilobite scrabbling along the ocean floor. Luis has included pearl-gold pieces in the ammonite’s shell, capturing the pearlescent look of the extinct creature’s nacre.