Journal article
Exceptional preservation of soft-bodied Ediacara Biota promoted by silica-rich oceans
LG Tarhan, AVS Hood, ML Droser, JG Gehling, DEG Briggs
Geology | GEOLOGICAL SOC AMER, INC | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1130/G38542.1
Abstract
The Ediacara Biota, Earth's earliest fossilized ecosystem of complex, macroscopic, multicellular organisms, occurs in terminal Ediacaran strata worldwide, yet how the fossils are preserved remains controversial. Ediacara assemblages consist of exceptionally preserved soft-bodied forms of enigmatic morphology and phylogenetic affinity. Many of these fossil assemblages are anactualistically preserved as casts and molds in sandstones ("Ediacara-style" preservation). Here we present evidence from the Ediacara Member of South Australia that Ediacara-style preservation was due to rapid, early-stage precipitation of silica cements, facilitated by the high silica saturation state of the oceans prior..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
Support for this research was provided by a National Science Foundation Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship and a grant from the American Philosophical Society Lewis and Clark Fund to Tarhan; a NASA Exobiology grant to Droser, Tarhan, and Briggs; a NASA Astrobiology Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship to Hood; an Australian Research Council Discovery grant to Gehling; and the Foundations of Complex Life NASA Astrobiology Institute to Briggs. We are grateful to Jane Fargher and Ross Fargher for access to their property, to N. Planavsky and E. Saupe for discussion, to A. Bezur, J. Eckert, and A. Greig for technical assistance, and to A. Muscente and four anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.