Mineralogical constraints on the paleoenvironments of the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation.

Pulsed oxidation and biological evolution in the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation.

Recent geochemical data from Oman, Newfoundland, and the western United States suggest that long-term oxidation of Ediacaran oceans resulted in progressive depletion of a large dissolved organic carbon (DOC) reservoir and potentially triggered the radiation of acanthomorphic acritarchs, algae, macroscopic Ediacara organisms, and, subsequently, motile bilaterian animals. However, the hypothesize...

Distinguishing geology from biology in the Ediacaran Doushantuo biota relaxes constraints on the timing of the origin of bilaterians.

The Ediacaran Doushantuo biota has yielded fossils that include the oldest widely accepted record of the animal evolutionary lineage, as well as specimens with alleged bilaterian affinity. However, these systematic interpretations are contingent on the presence of key biological structures that have been reinterpreted by some workers as artefacts of diagenetic mineralization. On the basis of ch...

A multicellular organism with embedded cell clusters from the Ediacaran Weng'an biota (Doushantuo Formation, South China).

Three-dimensional analyses of the early Ediacaran microfossils from the Weng'an biota (Doushantuo Formation) have focused predominantly on multicellular forms that have been interpreted as embryos, and yet they have defied phylogenetic interpretation principally because of absence of evidence from other stages in their life cycle. It is therefore unfortunate that the affinities of the various o...

Germanium/silica ratios in diagenetic chert nodules from the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation, South China

Eumetazoan fossils in terminal proterozoic phosphorites?

Phosphatic sedimentary rocks preserve a record of early animal life different from and complementary to that provided by Ediacaran fossils in terminal Proterozoic sandstones and shales. Phosphorites of the Doushantuo Formation, South China, contain eggs, egg cases, and stereoblastulae that document animals of unspecified phylogenetic position; small fossils containing putative spicules may spec...