Vendian-Cambrian Revolution

• Vendian - Latest proterozoic
• Ediacara fauna - a set of remarkable animal (fauna) fossils first discovered in the Ediacara Hills of Southern Australia
• Who discovered the Ediacara fauna while exploring a mountain ranges north of the city of Adelaide?

  Reginald Sprigg
• Sprigg found fossilized imprints of what were apparently soft-bodied organisms, preserved mostly on the undersides of slabs of quartzite and sandstone. •Most were round, disc-shaped forms that Sprigg dubbed "medusoids"
• These soft-bodied fossils of the first animals from the Vendian are also known as what?

  Vendian biota
• What were the only "fossils" found before the Vendian?

  cyanobacteria
• Stromatolites - formed by cyanobacteria, which are photosynthetic and are composed of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Fossil examples date back as old as 3.5 billion years.
• What brought about this appearance of multicellular life in the Vendian?

  Oxygen, Continental rifting
• Cambrian - earliest time period in the paleozoic
• The most famous fossil site of the Cambrian is the Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and represents one of the most diverse and well-preserved fossil localities in the world.
• Burgess Shale was discovered by who?

  Charles Walcott
• The fossils of the Burgess Shale are called what?

  Burgess Shale Fauna
• Majority of the Burgess Shale fauna are what?

  Benthic
• What are the dominant fossils found in Burgess Shale Fauna?

  arthropods
• The location of the Burgess fauna is indicated by a star on the continent of Laurentia (western North America).

  
• Pikaia gracilens - regarded as the earliest known primitive chordate. It was about 40 mm in length and swam above the sea-floor.