How did the Ediacara fauna differ from later multi-cellular animals?

1. What is unique about the Ediacaran fauna?
2. What are the major differences between the Ediacaran and Cambrian fauna?
3. What is the significance of the Ediacara biota?
4. Why do some scientists think that Ediacaran organisms do not represent present day animal groups?
5. What is the fundamental difference in the Ediacaran fauna and the Burgess Shale fauna?
6. Why are the fossils of the Ediacara Hills of Australia important?
7. What trait did the animals found at Ediacara Hills Have That was completely new?
8. What is Cambrian fauna?
9. When did the Ediacaran fauna go extinct?
10. What is the significance of the Cambrian explosion?
11. What does the order of the fossil record mean?
12. What time period did most animal phyla appear in the fossil record?
13. Who discovered the Ediacaran fauna?
14. Did Ediacaran animals eat each other?
15. Why are Burgess Shale fossils so well preserved?

What is unique about the Ediacaran fauna?

The Ediacaran Fauna were of a soft-bodied form, that lived in shallow-water, marine environment. The fossils consist of impressions of the organisms that mostly look like jellyfish, seapens, annelids (segmented worms) and primitive arthropods.

What are the major differences between the Ediacaran and Cambrian fauna?

They were macroscopic eukaryotic organisms. After a million years of Ediacaran extinction, Cambrian explosion occurred. It is the sudden appearance of mineralized skeletons and complex trace fossils. So, this is the main difference between Ediacaran extinction and Cambrian explosion.

What is the significance of the Ediacara biota?

The Ediacaran biota has particular significance for the history of life as it represents the earliest known assemblage of complex multicellular organisms, with “complex” here referring to organisms that host more than just a few different cell types.

Why do some scientists think that Ediacaran organisms do not represent present day animal groups?

Due to the difficulty of deducing evolutionary relationships among these organisms, some palaeontologists have suggested that these represent completely extinct lineages that do not resemble any living organism.

What is the fundamental difference in the Ediacaran fauna and the Burgess Shale fauna?

Before the discovery of the Ediacarans, it was believed that animals did not exist before the Cambrian Period (before 545 million years ago). In contrast to the Burgess Shale fossils, most of the Ediacaran fossils are burrows and trace fossils—casts and molds of the organisms they depict.

Why are the fossils of the Ediacara Hills of Australia important?

The fossils preserved in the ancient sea-floor at Ediacara record the first known multicellular animal life on Earth that predates the Cambrian. This diverse and exquisitely preserved community of ancient organisms represents a significant snapshot of our geological heritage.

What trait did the animals found at Ediacara Hills Have That was completely new?

Some scientists have suggested that the Ediacara fauna, named for the Ediacara Hills of South Australia, in which they were discovered in 1946, were the first metazoans (animals made up of more than one type of cell) that required atmospheric oxygen for their growth.

What is Cambrian fauna?

Cambrian faunas, like those of the present day, are commonly dominated in numbers and kind by members of the phylum Arthropoda. ... Compared with trilobites, however, ostracods are generally rare and of low diversity throughout the Cambrian, except in some rocks of Australia and China.

When did the Ediacaran fauna go extinct?

Evidence suggesting that a mass extinction occurred at the end of the Ediacaran period, 542 million years ago, includes: A mass extinction of acritarchs. The sudden disappearance of the Ediacara biota and calcifying organisms; The time gap before Cambrian organisms "replaced" them.

What is the significance of the Cambrian explosion?

The Cambrian period, part of the Paleozoic era, produced the most intense burst of evolution ever known. The Cambrian Explosion saw an incredible diversity of life emerge, including many major animal groups alive today. Among them were the chordates, to which vertebrates (animals with backbones) such as humans belong.

What does the order of the fossil record mean?

A fossil record is a group of fossils which has been analyzed and arranged chronologically and in taxonomic order. Fossils are created when organisms die, are incased in dirt and rock, and are slowly replaced by minerals over time.

What time period did most animal phyla appear in the fossil record?

The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was an event approximately 541 million years ago in the Cambrian period when practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.

Who discovered the Ediacaran fauna?

Although the period takes its name from the Ediacara Hills where geologist Reg Sprigg first discovered fossils of the eponymous Ediacaran biota in 1946, the type section is located in the bed of the Enorama Creek within Brachina Gorge in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, at 31°19′53.8″S 138°38′0.1″E.

Did Ediacaran animals eat each other?

Palaeontologists have found other hints that animals had begun to eat each other by the late Ediacaran. In Namibia, Australia and Newfoundland in Canada, some sea-floor sediments have preserved an unusual type of tunnel made by an unknown, wormlike creature.

Why are Burgess Shale fossils so well preserved?

Gaines and an international team collected physical and chemical evidence from the Burgess Shale and six similar-aged deposits in China and North America, pegging their extraordinary preservation to severe restriction of microbial activity after burial, due to a lack of oxygen and sulfate normally respired by microbes ...