Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Ediacara Biota - Palaeoecology

Medusoids and sea-pens in a shallow-water habitat were concluded to have predominated the biota of their time, according to the earliest attempts to reconstruct the Ediacara scene (eg. Glaessner, 1961). Later evidence suggested different lifestyles and deeper water. A number of myths that existed about the Ediacaran Biota were shown to have been wrong (Gehling, 1991). The first ideas about the Ediacaran biota suggests they were large compared to the fauna from the Cambrian. It is now known that though some large Dickinsonia, most known specimens were small. The Ediacaran fossils were believed  to be essentially 2-dimensional, but it is now known that factors of the preservational conditions were not taken into account, the true shapes of many organisms only became apparent when they were restored, revealing a variety of shapes such s conical, tubular and hemispherical.   

Sources & Further reading

1. Selden, Paul, Nudds, John, 2004, Evolution of Fossil Ecosystems, Manson Publishing