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Ediacaran Biota

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Encyclopedia of Geobiology

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Definition

Ediacaran period: An interval in the history of earth after the Marinoan/Varanger glaciation of the Neoproterozoic Era (see Chapter Snowball Earth), but before the Cambrian radiations. This interval marks the introduction of complex macroscopic organisms, leading to a revolution in the structure and evolution of marine paleocommunities, including the establishment of multi-level trophic structures, coevolutionary predator–prey interactions and infaunal activity.

Ediacaran biota: A highly distinctive assemblage of Ediacaran-age macroscopic organisms preserved as casts and moulds in siliciclastic, volcaniclastic, and carbonate sediments.

Introduction

Ediacaran biota is a heterogeneous assemblage representing the earliest known communities of macroscopic organisms. Diverse Ediacaran fossil assemblages are coeval with the earliest phosphatized metazoan embryos (Xiao et al., 1998; but see Bailey et al., 2007; Xiao et al., 2007), the earliest undisputed traces of metazoan...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Precambrian and Cambrian Paleontology and Stratigraphy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Prospekt Akademika Koptyga 3, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

    Dmitriy Grazhdankin

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  1. Dmitriy Grazhdankin
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Joachim Reitner  & Volker Thiel  & 

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Grazhdankin, D. (2011). Ediacaran Biota. In: Reitner, J., Thiel, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geobiology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9212-1_79

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