was believed that the Cambrian Explosion marked the first true abundance of multicellular life. However, this was discovered to be untrue after Sir Douglas Mawson and R.C. Sprigg mistakenly came across numerous "fossil jellyfish" in the Ediacara Hills while observing what was originally believed to be sandstones belonging to the lowest strata of the Cambrian. At first, these finding were dismissed as "fortuitous inorganic markings."(AAS Biographical Memoirs.) Several years later
labeled them as Early Cambrian. This is a time when most groups of animals were “entering the scene”. Surprisingly, he later found that they were from even before this time. The particular ones he found were called “Ediacara biota”. Upon being studied by peers, they found, “The biota is now known to have existed from 600 to 540 million years ago”. Ediacaran fossils are the oldest animal fossils we have. Many scientists
B.ED. SCIENCE WITH SPECIALISATION IN BIOLOGY Table of Contents The Burgess Shale Fauna 3 Introduction 3 History of Discovery 3 Preservation Bias 4 Major Fossils 4 Concluding remarks: 7 References: 8 The Burgess Shale Fauna Introduction The Burgess Shale Fauna is a fauna that was constructed based on a group of fossils that were initially found, in the Burgess Shale area in the Canadian Rockies (Gould, 1989). They are a very important group of fossils as “modern multicellular