The Ediacaran creatures are fascinating predecessors to be sure. They will likely turn out to be explosions of life, just like the Cambrian, but often not clearly related to it.
Ediacaran
The worm that was making those tracks 551–539 million years ago may be found
The claim that the worm challenges the Cambrian explosion which followed this Ediacaran period is weird because we knew there were worms in the Ediacaran on account of the tracks (and comb jellies too) but the explosion of multi-faceted life in the Cambrian is a unique event in any case.
Gunter Bechly: Ediacaran fossil paper is “junk science”
Dickinsonia, he says, is not an animal.
Researchers: Dickinsonia (571–541 mya) could have had mouth and guts
Associate Professor Jochen Brocks commented, “These fossils comprise our best window into earliest animal evolution and are the key to understanding our own deep origins.” Yes, in the sense that sudden emergence rather than a long, slow Darwinian process seems more likely all the time.
Oldest animal turns out to be 40 million years older than 558 mya
MOVE over, Dickinsonia. This 558-million-year-old creature was named the earliest known animal last year, but New Scientist can now exclusively reveal one that existed even earlier – by more than 40 million years. (paywall) Graham Lawton, “Exclusive: 600-million-year old blobs are earliest animals ever found” at New Scientist Note: They are described at New Scientist […]
Why did bigger, more complex organisms get started earlier in deep oceans?
A new paper tests the hypothesis that stable temperature was the key — cold but stable.
Researchers: Ediacaran to Cambrian transition took “less than 410,000 years”
Even if these researchers are a teensy bit optimistic about their pinpoint accuracy, the pattern is clear: The history of life is becoming a field markedly less favorable to hand-waving. And note, in 410,000 years, the transition from the multicellular but simple Ediacaran life forms to the diverse Cambrian life forms is supposed to have taken place purely by natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism). Aw, come on.
Gunter Bechly: Dickinsonia is NOT likely an animal
Rather, he thinks, it is an unknown type of life form, which belonged to “an alien clade,” not certainly related to later life forms. Readers will recall that fats (sterols) were recently recovered from a 558 million-year-old fossil entity, Dickinsonia, which was previously uncertainly classified but is now classified as an animal as a result. […]
Rob Sheldon: How we know the 558 mya animal Dickinsonia remains really contained fats
Recently, some readers asked whether the recent Dickinsonia fossil “fats” find from 558 mya featured cholesterol. Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon explains further: Cholesterol was not found by these researchers, nor did they make announcements of soft tissue in a fossil. What they did find were the breakdown products of cholesterol called “sterols”. Plants make […]
Fats recovered from Ediacaran fossil, 558 mya, shows that animals then were “large,” “abundant”
Yes, you read that right and our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon explains why it was possible below. From ScienceDaily: Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) and overseas have discovered molecules of fat in an ancient fossil to reveal the earliest confirmed animal in the geological record that lived on Earth 558 million years […]
Researchers: As soon as macroscopic life evolved, it formed communities
In short, there was no long, slow, Darwinian development of complex communities. We need a word for this: How about… ecological creationism?
But why did the Ediacaran life forms just die out?
News from the Ediacaran era (600 – 542 million years ago), when many animals were genuinely hard to distinguish at first from plants, sharpens the question: So-called Ediacaran organisms have puzzled biologists for decades. To the untrained eye they look like fossilized plants, in tube or frond shapes up to 2 meters long. These strange […]
Researchers: Ediacaran animals increased in size to spread their offspring rather than compete for food
From ScienceDaily: The research, led by the University of Cambridge, found that the most successful organisms living in the oceans more than half a billion years ago were the ones that were able to ‘throw’ their offspring the farthest, thereby colonising their surroundings. The results are reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. Prior […]
Researchers: First Ediacaran animal identified
Mysterious Ediacaran Dickinsonia, from 550 mya was definitely an animal, they say. [pic] From ScienceDaily: ‘Dickinsonia belongs to the Ediacaran biota — a collection of mostly soft-bodied organisms that lived in the global oceans between roughly 580 and 540 million years ago. They are mysterious because despite there being around 200 different species, very few […]
Multicellular fossils from 600 mya?
Actually, we might find multicellulars from earlier eras still.