My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

A few photos from the day I spent filming at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, in 2018. The crew were there to film the Ediacaran fossils and talk to the palaeontologists at Monument University Newfoundland.

Scientists discover one of the Earth's earliest #animals in Australian outback
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-scientists-earth-earliest-animals-australian.html

A new motile #animal with implications for the #evolution of axial polarity from the #Ediacaran of South #Australia https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ede.12491

"Quaestio simpsonorum is the first animal to show a definitive left-right asymmetry... The animal is a little smaller than the size of your palm and has a question-mark shape in the middle of its body that distinguishes between the left and right side"

New on 'Stuff': Book Review - Life on a Young Planet #️️️️ #book-review #english #archaeology #astrobiology #mass-extinction #geology #biology #science #cambrian #ediacaran https://stuff.graves.cl/posts/2024-08-28_19_59-book-review-life-on-a-young-planet.html

Life Only Needed A Small Amount of Oxygen to Explode, Scientists Find
https://www.sciencealert.com/life-only-needed-a-small-amount-of-oxygen-to-explode-scientists-find #Earth #life #oxygen #ediacaran

'Missing' sea #sponges discovered https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/missing-sea-sponges-discovered

A late-#Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07520-y

"No problem dating them back 700 million years. Yet convincing sponge #fossils only go back about 540 million years, leaving a 160-million-year gap in the fossil record... now researchers have reported a 550-million-year-old sea sponge from the 'lost years' and proposed that the earliest sea sponges had not yet developed mineral skeletons"

Team discovers 'missing' sea sponges https://phys.org/news/2024-06-geobiologist-team-sea-sponges.html

A late-#Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07520-y

"Molecular clock estimates indicate that #sponges must have evolved about 700 million years ago. And yet there had been no convincing sponge #fossils found in rocks that old."

A Magnetic Low May Have Paved the Way for Complex Life https://eos.org/articles/a-magnetic-low-may-have-paved-the-way-for-complex-life

Near-collapse of the #GeomagneticField may have contributed to atmospheric oxygenation and #animal radiation in the #Ediacaran Period https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01360-4

"the planet’s magnetic field was at a record low—around 30 times lower than today—for 26 million years starting around 565 million years ago. Such a drastic dip in magnetic field intensity could have had massive implications"

Earth's earliest sea #animals drove #evolution by stirring the water
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-earth-earliest-sea-creatures-drove.html

#Ediacaran marine animal forests and the ventilation of the oceans: Susana Gutarra et al. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(24)00533-5

"one of the most important Ediacaran organisms for disrupting the flow of water was the cabbage-shaped #Bradgatia... they might have been capable of enhancing local oxygen concentrations... making other areas of the sea floor more habitable"

2-MAY-2024
Evolution: Weak magnetic field may have supported diversification of life on Earth

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1042908

Key moment in the #evolution of life on Earth captured in fossils
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-key-moment-evolution-life-earth.html

U–Pb zircon–rutile dating of the Llangynog Inlier, #Wales: constraints on an #Ediacaran shallow-marine #fossil assemblage from East Avalonia https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/full/10.1144/jgs2023-081

"to determine the age of the #fossils, researchers used #volcanic ash layers like bookmarks in the geological sequence"

#Ediacaran #fossils reveal origins of #biomineralization that led to expansion of life on Earth
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-ediacaran-fossils-reveal-biomineralization-expansion.html

Constraining the onset and environmental setting of #metazoan biomineralization https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X23003497

"#Cloudina originated in a low #oxygen environment with periods of notably higher #oxygenation... it was not a case of sustained oxygenation that resulted in the appearance of #skeletonization... high #carbonate concentrations in the ocean were necessary"

Study challenges assumption that higher #oxygen levels led to rise of multicellular organisms in Earth's oceans https://phys.org/news/2023-07-assumption-higher-oxygen-multicellular-earth.html

Widespread #seafloor #anoxia during generation of the #Ediacaran Shuram carbon isotope excursion https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gbi.12557

"there was no major increase in the amount of oxygen when more advanced #fauna began to evolve and dominate Earth. In fact, there was somewhat of a slight decrease"

Earth's first #animals had particular taste in real estate
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-earth-animals-real-estate.html

Spatial distributions of #Tribrachidium, #Rugoconites, and #Obamus from the #Ediacara Member (Rawnsley Quartzite), South Australia https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/paleobiology/article/abs/spatial-distributions-of-tribrachidium-rugoconites-and-obamus-from-the-ediacara-member-rawnsley-quartzite-south-australia/066B9AD6529D8E2958DB13FBC9551D5C

"Given the alien nature of #Ediacaran Earth, the researchers were surprised to find an #animal that lived much the way #barnacles do today."

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

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.

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.

#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?