Late Ediacaran redox stability and metazoan evolution

Controls on the evolution of Ediacaran metazoan ecosystems: A redox perspective

A growing number of detailed geochemical studies of Ediacaran (635-541 Ma) marine successions have provided snapshots into the redox environments that played host to the earliest known metazoans. Whilst previous compilations have focused on the global evolution of Ediacaran water column redox chemistry, the inherent heterogeneity evident in palaeogeographically distinct environments demands a m...

Ediacaran skeletal metazoan interpreted as a lophophorate

While many skeletal biomineralized genera are described from Ediacaran (635-541 million years ago, Ma) strata, none have been suggested to have an affinity above the Porifera-Cnidaria metazoan grade. Here, we reinterpret the widespread terminal Ediacaran (approx. 550-541 Ma) sessile goblet-shaped Namacalathus as a triploblastic eumetazoan. Namacalathus has a stalked cup with radially symmetrica...

Ediacaran Marine Redox Heterogeneity and Early Animal Ecosystems

Oxygenation has widely been viewed as a major factor driving the emergence and diversification of animals. However, links between early animal evolution and shifts in surface oxygen levels have largely been limited to extrapolation of paleoredox conditions reconstructed from unfossiliferous strata to settings in which contemporaneous fossils were preserved. Herein, we present a multi-proxy pale...

Basal Metazoan Sensory Evolution

Oceanic oxygenation events in the anoxic Ediacaran ocean.

The ocean-atmosphere system is typically envisioned to have gone through a unidirectional oxygenation with significant oxygen increases in the earliest (ca. 635 Ma), middle (ca. 580 Ma), or late (ca. 560 Ma) Ediacaran Period. However, temporally discontinuous geochemical data and the patchy metazoan fossil record have been inadequate to chart the details of Ediacaran ocean oxygenation, raising ...