I mentioned I'd upload my shitty amateur Dickinsonia reconstruction a while back but never did, so here it is. #paleontology #ediacaran #Dickinsonia #paleoart

#Ediacaran

When the ice retreated, animals first began to blossom into their endless forms most beautiful. Ediacaran life was strange and quite unlike the creatures that would come later, but it was nonetheless an incredibly important chapter in life's history. Here we see the Ediacaran weirdos washing up on shore after a storm.

#paleoart

(2/14)

"who would win in a fight" was all fun and games until Spriggina

#fossils
#Ediacaran

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-assumption-higher-oxygen-multicellular-earth.html

Study challenges assumption that higher oxygen levels led to rise of multicellular organisms in Earth's oceans

#earlylife #evolution #geology #ediacaran #AvalonExplosion

The #glacier went that-a-way

The #striations on this face of the #Ediacaran (ca. 560 Ma) #Squantum Member of the #Roxbury #Conglomerate were probably left by the #Pleistocene #Laurentide ice sheet, which retreated ca. 12 ka. The striations have the right orientation, from northwest to southeast.

The Squantum Member was once interpreted as a (#glacial) #tillite. The most common contemporary model is a peri-#Gondwana #debrite (#turbidite).

My #photo. #Boston #geology #NewEngland #fieldTrip

RT @DMcEdiacaran
Day 2 of #EASC3705 took us to Mistaken Point looking at turbidites, tuffites and of course the #Ediacaran fossils. We collected data for a fun little paleocurrent exercise too. The iceberg and sunshine were just a bonus.

Happy #InverteFest ! I've done a bunch of watercolours starring invertebrates lately: #Ediacaran organisms washing up on the beach, an #Orthocone descending upon an unsuspecting #trilobite , and #horseshoecrabs and #seascorpions running into one another on the shore. #paleoart

@futurebird What I really want is a quilt modeled after one of the #ediacaran quilt biota.

AWW look at this cute kit where you can paint your own #ediacaran animals and then keep them as friends!

This is for all three scenes, but I might need that #Dickinsonia... would that be a good mother's day gift?

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1140585532/ediacaran-biota-3-pack-resin-cast-garage?click_key=688c2c3b22a1ddf57cb974eaf0208ef915e8ea73%3A1140585532&click_sum=8f41c287&external=1&ref=hp_opfy-1-3

Some wonderfully jelly-looking reconstructions of #Ediacaran biota.

#African #FossilFriday

#Namibia 🇳🇦 has yielded many #fossils of #Ediacarans, ~600 million year old #organisms that shed light on the early #evolution of #animals. One iconic #Ediacaran, #Rangea, was first described from Namibia, where a few #specimens are preserved in #3D, giving an idea of what this #ancient #enigma might have looked like when alive.

Photo from Vickers-Rich et al., 2013 (co-authored by members of the #Namibian #Geological Survey)

https://doi.org/10.1666/12-074R.1

#NewPaper #Paleontology #Ediacaran

Martyshyn, A., Uchman, A. New Ediacaran fossils from the Ukraine, some with a putative tunicate relationship. PalZ 95, 623–639 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12542-021-00596-1

Fascinating example of the iterative nature of science and shout-out to the professionalism of all involved!

https://news.ufl.edu/2023/02/mistaken-fossil-rewrites-history-india/

#ediacaran #fossil #india

Ooops! Discovery in India of 550+ million year old (Ediacaran) Dickinsonia fossils announced a few years ago turns out to have just been...the remains of recent beehives.
#paleontology #ediacaran
https://news.ufl.edu/2023/02/mistaken-fossil-rewrites-history-india/

For all the long eons of the Earth, the shores have remained empty. But now, something is stirring in the depths, and after each storm that rages across the seemingly barren world, strange creatures wash up on the beach. In death, they announce to the land the first animal life in the Ediacaran sea.

#MyArt #paleoart #Ediacaran #beach #watercolour

#NewPaper #Paleontology #Ichnology #Ediacaran #CambrianExplosion

GRETCHEN R. O'NEIL, LYDIA S. TACKETT, MICHAEL B. MEYER; THE ROLE OF SURFICIAL BIOTURBATION IN THE LATEST EDIACARAN: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF TRACE FOSSIL INTENSITY IN THE TERMINAL EDIACARAN–LOWER CAMBRIAN OF CALIFORNIA. PALAIOS 2022;; 37 (12): 703–717. doi: https://doi.org/10.2110/palo.2021.050

#NewPaper #Paleontology #Ediacaran #Paleoclimate

Griffiths, H. J., Whittle, R. J., & Mitchell, E. G. (2023). Animal survival strategies in Neoproterozoic ice worlds. Global Change Biology, 29, 10– 20. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16393

#FossilAdventCalendar Day 4

The oddest and - at over 560 million years in age - oldest #fossil featured in this #AdventCalendar is Fractofusus misrai from #Newfoundland 🇨🇦. This specimen in the #RoyalOntarioMuseum is from #MistakenPoint, one of the sites preserving the #Ediacaran #biota, the term for some of our planet's oldest #multicellular #fossils. Lots of questions remain about these ancient enigmas, among them, were #Ediacarans #animals or members of a different branch of the tree of life?

"We show that 558-million-year (Ma)-old tube worm-like #Calyptrina and mollusc-like #Kimberella possessed a gut and shared a #diet of green #algae and bacteria. Despite their ancient age, sterol #metabolism within the gut of both organisms was already comparable to extant invertebrates. 
#Dickinsonia, one of the key #Ediacaran animals, show no traces of dietary molecules, indicating a different feeding mode and possible external #digestion analogous to modern #Placozoa."

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01699-2

#NewPaper #Ediacaran

Bobrovskiy et al. 2022
Guts, gut contents, and feeding strategies of Ediacaran animals
Current Biology in press
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01699-2