Tag: Ediacaran
-
“I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It Before” – Unusual 550-Million-Year-Old Fossil Solves Paleontological Paradox
SciTechDaily has an interesting story about some of the earliest sponges. New research in the journal Nature suggests the earliest sponges did not have a mineral skeleton. Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and his collaborators described an Ediacaran (550 million years old) sponge that had not evolved the ability to generate the hard needle-like structures,…
-
The World’s Newest National Park Protects 550-Million-Year-Old Fossils
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the world’s newest national park in the world. Nilpena Ediacara National Park in South Australia opened to the public in on Thursday, April 27th, 2023. It’s a huge area, 148,000 acres. In 1946, Reg Sprigg found the fossil bed that housed fossils that would later be referred to as…
-
PBS Eons: These Fossils Were Supposed To Be Impossible
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the earliest animals, which evolved during a period of the Pre-Cambrian called the Ediacaran. Hidden in rocks once thought too old to contain complex life we may have found the animal kingdom’s oldest known predator.
-
Paleontologists Find Evolutionary Link between Ediacaran and Early Cambrian Multicellular Animals
SciNews has a story about a fossil that links the animals of the Ediacaran and the Cambrian periods. The fossils, which date to about 547 million years ago, were found by University of Edinburgh’s Professor Rachel Wood as she did field work in Namibia, in Africa. The fossil preserves soft tissue from an animal called…
-
PBS Eons: How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the Wormworld of the Ediacaran. Elongated tubes, flat ribbons, and other “worm-like” body plans were so varied and abundant that a part of the Ediacaran is sometimes known as Wormworld. But in the end, the ancient Wormworld was ended by the actions of its…
-
PBS Eons: How We Identified One of Earth’s Earliest Animals
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the oldest animals that dates back to the Precambrian during the Ediacaran. Scientists had no idea what type of organisms the life forms of the Ediacaran were—lichen, colonies of bacteria, fungi or something else. It turns out, the key to solving the puzzle of Precambrian…
-
Palaecast Episode 102: Small Shelly Fossils
There’s a new episode of the Palaeocast podcast. This one is about the strange “Small Shelly Fossils” that are found at the base of the Cambrian. Between the weird and wonderful rangeomorphs of the Ediacaran Period and the world-famous palaeocommunities of the Burgess Shale, the ‘Early Cambrian’ is host to a ‘waste basket’ of fossils…
-
PBS Eons: The Other Explosion You Should Know About
Check out the PBS Eons channel on YouTube. There’s a new episode once a week. The most recent one is “The Other Explosion You Should Know About”. It’s about the Avalon Explosion during the Ediacaran Period. Some of the wonderful paleoart is by Nobu Tamura at http://spinops.blogspot.com. Enjoy!
