The Ediacara biota is a group of mysterious, multicellular life forms found in the fossil record before the Cambrian Era. Paleontologists are unsure how to classify them and some believe they were a “failed experiment” that went extinct. The period began 630 million years ago and includes about 100 different species, some of which are well-preserved and allow for analysis of their developmental stages.
The Ediacara biota is a mysterious type of life found in the fossil record before the Cambrian Era, which began about 542 million years ago. They were the first multicellular life forms to leave fossils. Paleontologists don’t even fully agree on whether or not Ediacara biota can be classified using the current biological classification scheme.
Emerging about 610 million years ago, the Ediacaran biota had largely disappeared by the early Cambrian Era. Based on how alien they are to modern life, some paleontologists believe that the Ediacaran biota was a “failed experiment” that went extinct, and that the biodiversity that later emerged from the Cambrian was based on another evolutionary trajectory from single-celled organisms. About 100 different species of Ediacara have been described, of which about 10 survived after the period.
The period known as the Ediacaran began 630 million years ago, just after the 220 million year Cryogenian Period, which featured two of the worst glaciations in planetary history, which some paleontologists believe completely covered the Earth in ice. Shortly after the ice retreats, the first embryo-like fossils appear, although some think they are simply the fossils of very large bacteria. If the embryos are real, then multicellular life could have appeared just a few million years after the temperate climate returned to Earth.
The Ediacara biota includes the mollusc-like Kimberella, which was originally thought to be a box jellyfish; the extremely simplistic Vernanimalcula, one of the earliest ancestors of all bilateral animals; the disc-shaped Ediacaria, which could have been plant, animal, or fungus; the purse-shaped Pteridinium, which lacks virtually all the features traditionally associated with multicellular life; Dickinsonia, an ovoid, ridged worm; and Cyclomedusa, the most numerous Ediacaran fossil, a bottom-dwelling polyp.
As the first royal animals, the Ediacara biota is of great interest to evolutionary biologists. Some of the strata they are in are remarkably well preserved. They allow analysis not only of many species, but also of their developmental stages from larvae to adolescent to adult.
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