Hi all:
Yesterday, & even this morning, my google alert for the Flinders Ranges have brought up some interesting articles, such as this one found in New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727740.201-found-worlds-oldest-animal-fossils.html
However I became somewhat confused. The articles seemed to be talking about a time period prior to the Ediacaran that we all learnt so much about from the South Australian Museum experts, & Ediacaran fossils don’t seem to have been mentioned in any of the articles I scanned. I contacted Peter Cahalan to see if FROSAT could investigate any further.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Jannene,
Peter Cahalan bumped your query to me at SA Museum.
The news item is about tiny porus fossils from a limestone in the Trezona Formation from the region between Wilpena and Blinman.
These rocks are older that the rocks with the Ediacara biota fossils. They are of an age 650 million years) where they may be expected to only have fossils of microbes — some of which form stromatolite reefs (layered domes). But they MAY have fossils of the simplest kinds of marine animals — that is, sponges. There are a bunch of scientific reasons to look in rocks older than the Ediacara fossils, but not too much older, since these rocks have chemical fossils in them that are thought to come from sponges and no other organisms. However, we have no idea what sponges might look like in rocks of this age.
The tiny bits of ” violet crumble” that the Princeton Uni people have published are not very convincing. But that is what happens in science. We keep trying to find new evidence to test ideas about the evolution of life.
The Flinders Ranges have the best rocks on Earth for trying to find evidence of the most ancient forms of animal life.
Cheers,
Jim
I hope you others find this as useful as I did.
Thanks to Jim, who continues to ensure Flinders Ranges operators receive the most up to date & accurate geological (& related) information available & is so willing to share his knowledge.