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The explosive radiation of animals on Earth during the late Early Cambrian period (∼530–510 Ma) coincides with the deposition of enormous volumes of continentally derived sedimentary rocks throughout Gondwana. We show here, that these quartz-rich sedimentary units, collected from five continents, display remarkably similar detrital-zircon U–Pb age-patterns and propose that they were sourced from either side of a >8000-km-long and generally >1000-km-wide mountain chain (the Transgondwanan Supermountain), which formed following oblique collision between East and West Gondwana, commencing at ∼650 Ma. The depositional system supplied by this mountain chain was >100 km³, which is equivalent to covering all 50 states of the USA with ∼10 km of sediment, and it lasted for at least 260 Myr. The enormous size of the vegetation-free mountain chain, its position close to the equator and the …