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Australia: The Land Where Time Began |
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Ediacara Member, Rawnsley Quartzite, South Australia, Depositional and Preservational Environments – Assessment of palaeoenvironmental Proxies and Timing of ‘Ferruginisation’
The palaeoenvironmental setting of the Ediacaran biota is preserved in
the eponymous Ediacaran Member of the Rawnsley Quartzite, South
Australia has been a longstanding subject of debate. There are a number
of suggested interpretations such as deep marine, shelfal, intertidal
and terrestrial. In this paper Tarhan et
al. present the results of an
examination of the evidence supporting and against various
palaeoenvironmental interpretations of the fossiliferous Ediacara
Member, and also explore the range of palaeoenvironmental proxies that
have been employed in such studies in the past. The importance is
emphasised of reconciling palaeoenvironmental analysis with an
understanding of the processes of sedimentology and outline which of the
proxies are consistent with this approach. It is essential to assess
carefully palaeoenvironmental parameters to reconstruct the depositional
and early diagenetic history of the
Ediacara
Biota, and therefore the physical, chemical and biological factors
that have influenced the development and fossilisation of these earliest
known examples of complex life. The conclusion of Tarhan et
al. is that there is no
compelling evidence of a terrestrial setting for the Ediacara Member,
though there is strong support for a shallow marine depositional
environment.
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Author: M.H.Monroe Email: admin@austhrutime.com Sources & Further reading |