Talk:Ediacaran biota/Archive 1

Article move

Given that the International Commission on Stratigraphy decided to name the period Ediacaran instead of Vendian, shouldn't this article be renamed to Ediacaran biota? Google gives more hits to "Vendian biota" than "Ediacaran biota", but on the other hand "Ediacaran fauna" is the most popular (and misleading, if all lifeforms are considered). Google Scholar prefers "Ediacaran biota" over "Vendian biota".--Jyril 18:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Either way would be fine I think - it's not like you hear one at the grocery store all the time, and the other one not. :-) Stan 23:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree that "Ediacaran biota" is the way to go. The name is official for the period now, so we should tend that way too for other related items.

It is hard to argue against the ICS, so a merger under Ediacaran has my support too. Just do it. Fedor 19:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I also think Vendian should be merged into Ediacaran. Just include a note explaining the Vendian usage. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 21:36, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Why the merge?

Given that the comments above agreed that it would be better to merge Vendian biota into Ediacaran biota, why did the oppossite happen? -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 11:22, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Missing images

Images won't load, and seem not to exist at all, which is abnormal. What's wrong? --69.196.212.30 04:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

If you mean Image:Charnia wardi.jpg, it seems to be removed. Possible reason for this is that it may have been a copyrighted image.--Jyril 09:19, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The animals

Multi-celled?

Re: "The Ediacaran fossils are the oldest definite multicellular fossils". This may not be certain. Large single cells are possible: [1].

Some of the fossils are pretty definately jellyfish, and others may be sea pens, which at least today are multicellular. It is the pre-Ediacaran fossils that may be single cellular as they are simple in shape. GB 11:48, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

"Definitely" is pretty strong. I would suggest some form of "probably". The relationships between pre-cambrian and cambrian-plus forms has always been spotty.

Meanwhile, in China...

Since we are dealing with period biota rather than locational biota, the new stuff from China still counts as "Ediacaran".

I suggest, although I'm not brave enough to do it myself, that the Assemblage be expanded to include the Doushantuo Formation. I also would like to take Kimberella out of its "miscellaneous" section and include it alongside Vernanimalcula in a new Form-Taxon section for bilaterals.

-- Zimriel 00:21, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Jellyfish?

"Some of the fossils are pretty definately jellyfish, and others may be sea pens" - The developmental pattern has cast doubt on this. Do you have a recent reference making this assertion?

Also, I've removed 'Many believe that some or all of the Ediacarans are precursors to one or more modern phyla that arose in the Cambrian'. The current views place them as extinct classes, phyla or even kingdoms - no mainstream hypotheses that I'm aware of suggest they could be precursors to phyla. Again, I'd be interested to see any references in contradiction! Verisimilus 10:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Article Rewrite

I've felt for a while that this page could be improved, and have thus spent the last couple of days fashioning a replacement. I should probably have posted up here before embarking upon such a project but its extended stagnant period meant I didn't suspect anyone would make major edits - apologies to contemporaneous editors, whose improvements have diluted the case for complete replacement!

I've tried to incorporate all the facts from the original article, with a few caveats.

• 'Also known as' - refer to related but subtly different things. Whilst the redirect pages should point to this article, hopefully an explanation of all the terms is contained within the article.

• Locations - list of localities replaced with current status of 'global distribution'.

• Morphologies - updated to more coherent and consistent form with Encyclopaedic style (minimising the use of 'apparently' clauses).

• In context - removed discussion of pre-Ediacaran life, which, whilst interesting, is outwith the scope of the article.

• List of species - moved to subpage

The page is now fully referenced and contains a 'hacked' Table of Contents to crop it to a reasonable length. This has added somewhat to the byte count (~10kb) and I've worded it as concisely as possible; I feel that this is a broad and interesting subject demanding slightly more than the standard 30k character limit.

I'd be delighted to receive any comments or suggestions for the page!

Verisimilus 11:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

---

The previous article is reproduced here for posterity and ease of reference.

The Ediacaran biota (also known as Ediacaran fauna(s), Vendian biota, Vendian forms, Vendian fauna(s), Vendobionta or Vendozoa) are a group of ancient lifeforms that are found in rocks of the Ediacaran Period, some 10-40 million years (Ma) older than the Cambrian faunas that represent the oldest (shelled) fossils of classical paleontology.

Locations

Ediacaran biota take their name from the first discovery in 1946 by Reg Sprigg a mineral geologist exploring the Ediacara Hills at the northern margin of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Whilst similar fossil assemblages from Nama, Namibia had been previously described, their great age had not been appreciated. They have subsequently been attributed to the Ediacaran period, approximately 635 to 542 million years ago, just before the Cambrian.

Similar fossils have since been found in Brazil, Newfoundland (Mistaken Point), the Canadian Maritimes, North Carolina, England (Charnwood), Canada's Northwest Territories, the western United States, Scandinavia, the White Sea, Siberia, and Ural region of Russia, Poland, and elsewhere.

Notable Discoveries

In 1946, the geologist Reg Sprigg found peculiar Precambrian fossils on the western margin of the Flinders Ranges in the Ediacaran hills. They were first studied by Martin Glaessner starting in the 1950s. Glaessner at first thought that the creatures were primitive versions of animals such as corals, sea-pens, and worms better known from later times. Since the Ediacaran deposits occur in coarse sandstone, details below about a millimeter cannot be preserved. Guy Narbonne's fortuitous discovery of fossils under a fine ash bed at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland were preserved in fine muds, allowing details a hundred times finer to be resolved. This closer examination allowed the previous interpretation to be quashed: the developmental pattern of the individuals is not seen in any animals.

Morphology

These now extinct forms are generally segmented or frondlike with no visible organs other than holdfasts in some varieties. Many of these fossils are difficult to interpret. They are probably entirely late Precambrian, although several supposed Ediacara-like forms have been identified from the Cambrian, but many of these have since been redescribed as trace fossils, pseudofossils, or microbial structures.

Movement traces are known for some organisms, such as Dickinsonia, Kimberella, and Yorgia. These, and similar fossils, are often interpreted as being ancestral to Phanerozoic phyla - especially the arthropods. It is commonly noted how Spriggina and Parvancorina resemble trilobites. Ediacara organisms include frond-like forms (e.g. the rangeomorphs), disks with various ornamentations, what appear to be air mattress-like forms, and other unlikely shapes. Some frond-like fossils, such as Charniodiscus and Charnia were attached to the seafloor by discoidal holdfasts. They were originally thought to be simple precursors of more modern forms, and a few elements of the fauna still look like possible precursors of such later forms as arthropods and molluscs. But many appear to belong to some evolutionary sidetrack. It has been proposed that they constitute an ancient phylum, the Vendobionta, that largely died out just before the beginning of the Cambrian. Another commonly cited possibility is that the frond-like fossils belong to the phylum cnidaria and are related to modern sea pens.

Well known Ediacara forms include Arkarua, Charnia, Dickinsonia, Ediacaria, Marywadea, Onega, Yorgia and Pteridinium. The full list runs to 100 or more taxa. Some of those named are rare but interesting for one reason or another. Others are widely distributed.

As time has passed, assemblages of the Ediacara biota have, if anything, become more rather than less enigmatic.

The earliest Ediacaran fossils, 575 million years ago, were fronds attached to the seafloor by discs.

Frond-like fossils such as Charniodiscus superficially resemble living seapens, but grow by inflation or insertion at the tip, not basal insertion as modern sea pens.

Various disc-like fossils superficially resemble creatures like sea-anemones (Mawsonites, Hiemalora and Inaria) and sponges (Palaeophragmodictya).

One of the largest and most distinctive Ediacara animals was a flattened, oval-shaped and segmented worm-like form called Dickinsonia that could grow to a metre or more long.

Arkarua, a tiny circular disc with five, evenly spaced points, suggests the form of an extinct echinoderm called an edrioaster.

About 560 million years ago, trace fossils like worm burrows appear in the fossil record together with small body fossils that have bilateral symmetry. A few of these fossils Kimberella, Parvancorina and Spriggina seem to be possible early examples of molluscs and arthropods. However, these are not considered part of the Ediacaran Biota in its strict sense..

Many of the best known Ediacaran creatures appear to be immobile bags, annulate disks, fronds, large single-cells, and air-mattress-like shapes that have no obvious relationship to later forms. They generally lack typical features of digestive tracts such as mouths, intestines (or processing chambers) and an anus. Legs and jointed limbs are also absent. Some suggest that without significant predators at the time, there is no need for fast processing of nutrients or quick ingestion, and thus digestion was mostly via absorption. The eventual introduction of significant predators may be what triggered the Cambrian explosion, according to this view.

There is considerable controversy about the nature of many Ediacaran forms, with some having been classified in as many as six kingdoms.

In context

The Ediacara biota is occasionally referred to as the Vendian biota but this has been used more rarely in recent times. This usage echoes the former name Vendian, by which the Ediacaran Period was known in Russia and some other parts of the world before the official naming of the period in 2004. Modern usage tends toward using Ediacaran to describe the full biological range including algae, sponges, and all other life forms of the late Precambrian.

The term "Vendobionta", which is also used, is not a description of the fauna, but rather the name of a separate kingdom where German palaeontologist Dolf Seilacher put many of the fossils. This has been extremely controversial, and has not gained widespread acceptance.

The Ediacaran fossils are the oldest definite multicellular fossils, but there are even older fossils known. Well-dated fossils of bacteria are found in cherts 3460 million years and probable bacterial mats known back to 3600 million years. 3800 million year old graphite in metasediments from Western Greenland is thought to be of organic origin. Many very old proposed fossils such as Eozoon have subsequently been rejected as naturally occurring pseudo-fossils. Coiled organic tubes with serial partitions, up to a meter in length and a few mm wide, called Grypania first discovered in 2000 million year old rocks of Lake Superior, are the oldest known large fossil organisms. They may be algae or giant bacteria. Chain of bead fossils called Horodyskia occur in 1000-1300 million year old rocks in Montana, Western Australia and Tasmania. The oldest current candidates for early multicelled life are 1000 million-year old burrow-like forms from India and Australia, and 700 million-year old worm impressions from China. The first known surface burrows, that are common and clearly the traces of moving animals, occur in Ediacara fossil assemblages from rocks about 560 million years before the present.

External links

• Online exhibit at U. of California Museum of Paleontology
• The Ediacaran Biota page @ Paleos

List of known Ediacaran genera

(Cropped)

See Also

• List of fossil sites (with link directory)

References

• McMenamin, Mark A. S. The Garden of Ediacara New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-231-10559-2

---

Vast improvement. I demoted all the headers one step, so they don't clutter up the talk page TOC. And here's the link to the last diff before the rewrite. The extract above is actually from three or four edits before that. | Pat 17:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Gallery

Not sure I'm too keen the gallery. The pictures are so small the detail that distinguishes the fossils can't be made out. And the gallery box looks a bit of a mess too, breaking the flow of the article...

This probably isn't very helpful as I can't currently come up with a better suggestion!

I'm going to have a quick toy with Charnia to see if that helps clear things up a little.

Verisimilus 13:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

 Done - Now fixed. | Verisimilus

Volcano picture

Do we really need a picture of a volcano to illustrate where ash comes from? Sand is also mentioned, so perhaps we should add a picture of a sand dune. I propose removing the picture unless someone can come up with a good reason for it to stay. Comments anyone? JohnBagwell 17:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Image was inserted to make otherwise dry section a little more visually stimulating. I agree it's not necessary but it does break things up a little. If you can think of a more relevant picture to replace it with please do! Otherwise I suspect it will eventually go. | Verisimilus 18:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I see no problem with the picture, it does make tha analysis of the preservation more interesting, but a relevant picture would be better. Enlil Ninlil 05:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Mention of older fossils - e.g. Nimbia

This is more a reminder to me to include a mention of Twitya discs in this article - but if anyone else beats me to it I'll be delighted! Verisimilus T 17:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Hofmann, H.J. (1990-12-01). "Ediacaran remains from intertillite beds in northwestern Canada". Geology. 18 (12): 1199–1202. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)