The story
At Mistaken Point on the southeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada, hundreds of bedding surfaces are covered with fossils about 574 to 565 million years old. They include fern-like fronds such as Charnia, spindle-shaped Fractofusus and bush-like forms, some over a metre long. S. B. Misra, a Newfoundland geologist, first reported them in 1967. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the best place in the world to see the Avalon assemblage of the Ediacaran biota.
The creatures lived on a deep, dark seafloor below the reach of sunlight, so they could not have been plants. They had no mouths or guts that scientists can find and probably absorbed food from the water. Repeated volcanic ash falls smothered them in place, leaving whole communities with their positions intact. Statistical studies of how the fronds are scattered show how they reproduced and competed, a rare insight for such old life. Charnia was independently found in Charnwood Forest, England, in 1957, and Mistaken Point shows that such organisms were already large and varied millions of years before the Cambrian.
Why it mattered
- Mistaken Point holds the oldest widely accepted large, complex organisms, setting a floor for the age of big body plans.
- Its in-place fossil communities let scientists test how early ecosystems were organised, including spacing, reproduction and competition.
- It anchors the Avalon assemblage that is compared with later White Sea and Nama communities.
Community notes
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