Name: Ediacara Assemblage
Location: Worldwide - named after locality in Australia. Also found in Namibia, Sweden, Eastern Europe, Canada, England, Wales, New Foundland,
Age: Neoproterozoic

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Location

The Ediacara assemblage was first recognized in Namibia in 1908, where it was ignored, and the fossils left in a drawer until a similar assemblage was found in Ediacara, near Adelaide in Australia, by the mining geologist R.C.Sprigg in 1947. Other deposits assigned to the Ediacara assemblage were found in:

  • Sweden,
  • Eastern Europe
  • Baltica (Northern Europe)
  • Siberia
  • NW Laurentia (an ancient continent formed of North America, Canada and Greenland)
  • SW Laurentia
  • South China
  • South America
  • Mistaken Point Formation, Newfoundland
  • Charnwood Forest, England
  • Wales

Fig 1. Map of World, Ediacara assemblage locations denoted by red stars.

This demonstrates that the Ediacara was an assemblage with world-wide geographical range, although the different, Pre-Cambrian, global palaeogeography should be kept in mind.

Based on shared taxa in different localities, the locations can be placed in three groups: (1) Newfoundland and Charnwood Forest, UK. (2) Ediacara, Baltica, Siberia and NW Laurentia. (3) Namibia, SW Laurentia, S. America and S.China (Waggoner, 1999).

Return to Ediacara Homepage

Section author: Kate Yarrington

This section is part of a Fossil Lagerstätten web site which has been built up as a result of the efforts of the 2002-3 MSc Palaeobiology class in the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Bristol, as part of a course in Scientific Communication.

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