RECent publications
Everything we know about the Ediacaran Period is the result of hours of painstaking and rigorous research, largely carried out by scientists at universities, museums or research institutes across the globe, but often also involving local collectors. The process of publishing new findings involves obtaining funding, doing field or laboratory work, writing manuscripts, submitting them to journals where they will be peer-reviewed by other experts in the field, and finally publication in a journal.
Only a small proportion of research is picked up by the media and makes it into the public gaze, so here we hope to collate recent Ediacaran papers that may be of slightly deeper interest. In most cases, clicking on the linked text should take you to the publisher's website, where you can either download a copy of the paper, or obtain the contact details of the authors to request a copy. We have started this page in December 2016, and hope to feature a new paper roughly once each month.
Only a small proportion of research is picked up by the media and makes it into the public gaze, so here we hope to collate recent Ediacaran papers that may be of slightly deeper interest. In most cases, clicking on the linked text should take you to the publisher's website, where you can either download a copy of the paper, or obtain the contact details of the authors to request a copy. We have started this page in December 2016, and hope to feature a new paper roughly once each month.
PALAEONTOLOGY
Yang et al. 2016. To determine the patterns of biological evolution through the Ediacaran Period, we rely on radiometric dates from geological sections around the world that contain fossil material. This paper provides new dates from the Dengying Formation of Yunnan Province, China, not only revealing the age of Ediacaran macrofossils found within the Dengying Formation, but also improving correlation between units in different parts of South China, which in turn will lead to better understanding of the relative timings of major global biological and geological events.
Cunningham et al. 2017. The term 'Darwin's dilemma' is used colloquially to refer to the mismatch between the fossil record and molecular clock predictions for the timing of the appearance of the first animals. Molecular clock estimates consistently date the origins of animals to between 850 and 650 million years ago, whereas the fossil record shows that the first fossils that can confidently be assigned to modern animal groups almost all appear in the Cambrian, around 540 to 520 million years ago. This paper weighs up the evidence for older animals in the Ediacaran Period, and discusses the reasons why the fossil and molecular clock records may differ in their predictions of the timing of early animal evolution.
Budd & Jensen, 2017: the 'Savannah' hypothesis. This has actually been available to read online as an Early View article for over a year, but has finally been published in print. It gives an animal-centric overview of the Ediacaran macrobiota, suggesting that many of the taxa belong to the stem groups of metazoan (animal) groups. A key contribution is discussion of how the evolution of the Ediacaran macrobiota would have, for the first time, introduced large concentrations of organic matter to the seafloor, changing the distribution of organic carbon from largely homogeneous to distinctly heterogeneous. The authors suggest that this shift in the distribution of nutrients may have stimulated evolution amongst clades of bilaterian animals, triggering a burst of diversity as animals began to burrow and move to take advantage of these food sources.
Droser, Tarhan and Gehling 2017: This paper represents a timely summary of The Ediacaran Period generally, but focuses on the idea of biotic assemblages - that specific sets organisms coexisted at particular times, making definable communities. In the Ediacaran Period, these are The Avalon assemblage (~571 - 561 Ma), The White Sea assemblage (560 - 551 Ma) and The Nama assemblage (550 - 541 Ma). The authors argue that there are two great periods of innovation in the Ediacaran Period; the first is with the emergence of The Avalon assemblage, which saw the first communities of complex macroscopic organisms, and the second in The White Sea assemblage, which is the point, the authors argue, at which we begin to see the transition to more typically Phanerozoic ecosystems. This papers highlights the Ediacaran Period as a time of immense change, and shows just how dynamic it was, on both a temporal and organismal level.
Dunn, Liu and Donoghue 2018: This paper discusses the utility of understanding an organisms life history in uncovering where it sits in the tree of life. The authors summarise what is known of growth and development in three iconic Ediacaran fossils; Charnia masoni, Dickinsonia costata and Pteridinium simplex and conclude that there is enough developmental data to say that Charnia and Dickinsonia (and other related taxa) were animals. There is, however, a paucity of data regarding Pteridinium and the morphogroup to which it belongs more generally (the erniettomorphs), means that it is difficult to support any particular phylogenetic affinity.
Droser, Tarhan and Gehling 2017: This paper represents a timely summary of The Ediacaran Period generally, but focuses on the idea of biotic assemblages - that specific sets organisms coexisted at particular times, making definable communities. In the Ediacaran Period, these are The Avalon assemblage (~571 - 561 Ma), The White Sea assemblage (560 - 551 Ma) and The Nama assemblage (550 - 541 Ma). The authors argue that there are two great periods of innovation in the Ediacaran Period; the first is with the emergence of The Avalon assemblage, which saw the first communities of complex macroscopic organisms, and the second in The White Sea assemblage, which is the point, the authors argue, at which we begin to see the transition to more typically Phanerozoic ecosystems. This papers highlights the Ediacaran Period as a time of immense change, and shows just how dynamic it was, on both a temporal and organismal level.
Dunn, Liu and Donoghue 2018: This paper discusses the utility of understanding an organisms life history in uncovering where it sits in the tree of life. The authors summarise what is known of growth and development in three iconic Ediacaran fossils; Charnia masoni, Dickinsonia costata and Pteridinium simplex and conclude that there is enough developmental data to say that Charnia and Dickinsonia (and other related taxa) were animals. There is, however, a paucity of data regarding Pteridinium and the morphogroup to which it belongs more generally (the erniettomorphs), means that it is difficult to support any particular phylogenetic affinity.
