T87 Earth and Life Co-Evolution in the Early to Middle Neoproterozoic (1000 to ca. 635 Ma)

Monday, 5 November 2018
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 143-144

CRYOGENIAN ASPIDELLA FROM NORTHWESTERN CANADA

Paper number: T87-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:25 AM – 10:40 AM

Authors

Abstract

The sudden appearance of large, relatively complex macroscopic organisms in the earliest of the Ediacara biota (the Avalon assemblage) has long been an enigma. Restudy of fossils from immediate pre-Marinoan, deep-water deposits of the Mackenzie Mountains, NW Canada, documents the earliest stages of the growth of subphotic benthic communities. This includes the “Twitya discs” originally reported in 1990; simple biogenic forms of uncertain taxonomic affinity. At least two specimens of the Twitya discs share several features unique to the Ediacaran form-taxon Aspidella Billings, 1872. This assemblage is the best-documented assemblage of multiple specimens of Ediacaran-type discs recorded below glaciogenic rocks of the Marinoan glaciation, and may hint at the origins of the deep-water benthic communities of the Ediacara biota.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 50, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2018AM-318442

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