Mistaken Point in Newfoundland, Canada is a fossil site with well-preserved Ediacaran fauna, dating back 565 million years. The organisms lived in deep, dark water and are of “unknown affinity”. The fossils provide insight into the early dawn of complex life on Earth.
Mistaken Point is a fossil site located in Newfoundland, Canada that contains some of the earliest known examples of accurately dated and well-preserved complex multicellular fossils. The fossil assemblage dates back 565 million years and consists of the mysterious Ediacaran fauna: bag, spindle, bush, sea feather (cnidarians), and frond-like organisms that lived on the deep, dark ocean floor and have finely preserved layers of volcanic ash. In addition to being the name of a type of fauna, “Ediacaran” is also a geochronological designation, as in the “Ediacaran Period,” which spans from 610 million years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian, 542 million years ago.
Mistaken Point itself is located at the southernmost point of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula. Here, large black cliffs overlooking the Atlantic are rich in Precambrian fossils. Ediacara fossils are found in large numbers along the southern coast of the Avalon Peninsula, but the Mistaken Point fossils are the most famous. The point takes its name from the more than fifty shipwrecks that have occurred in the area over the past few centuries.
The Mistaken Point fossils are a window into the early dawn of complex life on Earth. Living so deep underwater, these organisms would have been in a completely dark and cold environment. Volcanic ash covered the area in such a way that the Mistaken Point assemblage consisted of large slabs that served as “snapshots” of what the sea floor looked like. This allows scientists to use the assemblage to study the ecology of Ediacaran organisms in a way that is not possible anywhere else.
One aspect that many of the Ediacaran fossils have in common is the tufted appearance. This has led some paleontologists to consider the organisms related. The Ediacara fossils found at Mistaken Point are of “unknown affinity,” meaning their relationship to later life forms is very difficult to determine. Much of the Ediacaran fauna appears to have gone extinct entirely rather than evolving into different species. By the time of the Cambrian explosion, 20-30 million years after the heyday of the Ediacaran fauna, most of the previously thriving communities had already disappeared. The adaptive radiation of the Cambrian resulted in all major body plans and evolutionary niches that persist to this day. Because of their sudden cessation, the Ediacaran fauna is sometimes referred to as “a failed experiment in multicellular life”.
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