Ediacaran fossil site of Mistaken Point

Mistaken Point illustrates better than anywhere the critical milestone in the history of Life on Earth when, after almost 3 billion years of microbe-dominated evolution, “life got big” and metazoan communities bloomed (Narbonne, 2011). The enigmatic lifeforms preserved at Mistaken Point (Anderson and Misra, 1968; Morris, 1989) are early experiments in the evolution of complex life on Earth, dating to 580-560 million years before present. Here at Mistaken Point are found the oldest known examples of architecturally complex organisms up to 2 m in length, soft bodied organisms known as rangeomorphs and others, including forms interpreted as ancestral animals. The exceptional preservation at Mistaken Point is a consequence of sudden and repeated burial beneath fine volcanic ash layers gently dispersed in the marine waters. Preserved are the oldest and most diverse examples of deep sea Ediacaran communities, with evidence of tiering and ecological succession. The sedimentary succession at Mistaken Point (Williams et al., 1985) records 20 million years of this pivotal watershed in evolution.