16 brainspacemagazine.com @BrainspaceMag /BrainspaceMagazineWhat were they?
Ediacarans are hundreds
of millions of years older
than the oldest dinosaur.
From their fossils, we can
tell that there were many
different types of Edia-
carans that lived together
as a community. One type
of Ediacaran was Fracto-
fusus, an organism that looked like a leafy fern and would
have lived attached to the sea floor. Aspidella teranovica was
another Ediacara that was shaped like a disk. Aspidella is
the only Ediacaran discovered so far that was able to move
around. Squiggly trails next to Aspidella fossils indicate that
this Ediacaran organism moved by squirming though the
mud. Aspidella and Fractofusus fossils are very common in
the Newfoundland fossil beds, but there were many more
types of Ediacarans that existed as well.How were the fossils made?
You may be wondering how the
Ediacarans went from living,
moving organisms to imprints
on a rock. The Ediacarans in
Newfoundland once lived on
the soft sea floor of a very deep
ocean. When they died, their
bodies were pressed into the sea
floor. As time passed, more sand
and pieces of sediment settled
on top of them, trapping the
Ediacarans between two layers
of rock. Their bodies eventually
decomposed, leaving imprints
in the rock beds. Today, we can
use these imprints to study life
that existed millions of years
PHOTO CREDIT PHOEBE COHEN ago!Ever wondered what kind of creatures lived on Earth before us humans?
Chances are you’ve heard about mammoths and dinosaurs, but what came
before them? Multicellular life forms first appeared on Earth between 575 and
542 million years ago. These life forms developed deep under the ocean, and are
known as the Ediacaran biota. Fossils of Ediacaran biota can be found all around
the world, and the oldest fossils of all can be found in Newfoundland, Canada.
WRITTEN BY PASCALE BIDERWhat happened to them?
Although we know quite a lot about Ediacarans, this is one question that is still unanswered. Did Ediacarans just
disappear? Or did they evolve into other organisms, more like the ones that we see on Earth today? Scientists are
examining the Ediacaran’s fossils for more clues!history