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The youngest Ediacaran fossils from Southern Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2015

Guy M. Narbonne ,
Beverly Z. Saylor  and
John P. Grotzinger
Guy M. Narbonne
Affiliation:
1Department of Geological Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada,
Beverly Z. Saylor
Affiliation:
2Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachussettes Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02138, 3Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706,
John P. Grotzinger
Affiliation:
2Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachussettes Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02138,
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Abstract

Discovery of fossils of the Ediacara biota near the top of the Spitzkopf Member at farm Swartpunt extends the known range of these remains in Namibia more than 600 m to near the sub-Cambrian unconformity. The fossiliferous beds occur approximately 100 m above a volcanic ash dated at 543 ± 1 Ma, and thus may be the youngest Proterozoic Ediacara-type fossils reported anywhere in the world. Fossils are preserved within and on the tops of dm-thick beds of storm-deposited sandstone at two stratigraphic levels; the environment is interpreted as open marine, generally calm but with episodic disruptions by storm waves, and probably within the euphotic zone. The presence of Pteridinium carolinaense (St. Jean), which is also known from the classic sections in Ediacara and the White Sea among others, reinforces evidence from geochronology and chemostratigraphy that the Swartpunt section is terminal Neoproterozoic in age. The new genus and species Swartpuntia germsi is a large, multifoliate frond that exhibits at least three quilted petaloids. Macroscopically, Swartpuntia resembles Pteridinium and Ediacara-type fronds such as Charniodiscus traditionally interpreted as Cnidaria, whereas microscopically it exhibits segmentation that is remarkably similar to that of the putative worm Dickinsonia. Combination of diagnostic characters of these supposedly disparate groups in a single species suggests that many species of quilted Ediacaran organisms were more similar to each other than they were to any modern groups, and provides support for the concept of the “Vendobionta” as a late Neoproterozoic group of mainly multifoliate organisms with a distinctive quilted segmentation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 71 , Issue 6 , November 1997 , pp. 953 - 967
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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