Catching the second Ediacara wave - PDU2 Adelaide 2016

Catching the second Ediacara wave: ecology and biology of the Ediacara Biota as recorded in South Australia

Prof. Mary L. DROSER
University of California, Riverside, USA
Monday 11 July, 9:30 am – Inaugural Session – Ediacaran

Mary was born in New York but spent summers as a kid playing in tide pools, fascinated by the marine invertebrates. She combined her interest in marine ecology with her love of geology to become a palaeontologist. She attended the University of Rochester, New York, for her undergraduate degree and then the University of Southern California for her PhD. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on the advent of animals, and interactions between organisms and their environments through time. She has been working for over 15 years on the Ediacara Biota.

Abstract: Patterns of origination and evolution of early complex life are largely interpreted from the fossils of the Ediacara Biota. The iconic record of South Australia is a critical window to Ediacaran organisms after the reign of the rangeomorphs. Study of 30 beds within the Ediacara Member has demonstrated that this younger assemblage, as evidenced by dramatic development of body plans and ecospace utilisation, is a radiation in its own right. Notable aspects include remarkable increases in mobility, the appearance of undisputed bilaterians, the advent of sexual reproduction, the appearance of the first biomineralisers, the advent of active heterotrophy by multicellular organisms and the assembly of complex ecosystems, all attributes of modern animals.

[AlphaNumeric]

Excellent lecture! The Eidiacarian is so fascinating

[donweaver]

I’ve watched and listened to this scores of times, (to the audio while I walk my mail route.). It’s all just so amazing. Some of the very first organisms on this planet. I envy the Paleontologists and the other professionals who devote their lives to discover our earth’s life-history. I would gladly volunteer, for free, to help them in the field. I’d lug their equipment to any of the remote assemblages anywhere in the world, White Sea, Mistaken Point, the Nama assemblage in Namibia, and of course the Ediacaran hills in Australia. Just feed me my meals and I’d be a very happy man.

[Raptorman]

The more I look at it the more I'm convinced that the Ediacara was the match that set the fire of the Cambrian. We need to find more locations around the world with exposed Ediacara surfaces. This period wasn't the start of life but it is crucial to multicellular life and we need to know more about it.

[wafikiri_]

Very interesting and educative lecture. I have enjoyed it much. It is a real luck that such a variety of soft-body fossils still exist after two-thirds of a billion years. Even luckier that good scientists are able to discover and analyse them.

Pity about the muted nearly two minutes, but things like that happen to anybody.