Carbonaceous biosignatures of diverse chemotrophic microbial communities from chert nodules of the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation

Germanium/silica ratios in diagenetic chert nodules from the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation, South China

Pulsed oxidation and biological evolution in the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation.

Recent geochemical data from Oman, Newfoundland, and the western United States suggest that long-term oxidation of Ediacaran oceans resulted in progressive depletion of a large dissolved organic carbon (DOC) reservoir and potentially triggered the radiation of acanthomorphic acritarchs, algae, macroscopic Ediacara organisms, and, subsequently, motile bilaterian animals. However, the hypothesize...

A multicellular organism with embedded cell clusters from the Ediacaran Weng'an biota (Doushantuo Formation, South China).

Three-dimensional analyses of the early Ediacaran microfossils from the Weng'an biota (Doushantuo Formation) have focused predominantly on multicellular forms that have been interpreted as embryos, and yet they have defied phylogenetic interpretation principally because of absence of evidence from other stages in their life cycle. It is therefore unfortunate that the affinities of the various o...

Experimental taphonomy of giant sulphur bacteria: implications for the interpretation of the embryo-like Ediacaran Doushantuo fossils.

The Ediacaran Doushantuo biota has yielded fossils interpreted as eukaryotic organisms, either animal embryos or eukaryotes basal or distantly related to Metazoa. However, the fossils have been interpreted alternatively as giant sulphur bacteria similar to the extant Thiomargarita. To test this hypothesis, living and decayed Thiomargarita were compared with Doushantuo fossils and experimental t...

Eumetazoan fossils in terminal proterozoic phosphorites?

Phosphatic sedimentary rocks preserve a record of early animal life different from and complementary to that provided by Ediacaran fossils in terminal Proterozoic sandstones and shales. Phosphorites of the Doushantuo Formation, South China, contain eggs, egg cases, and stereoblastulae that document animals of unspecified phylogenetic position; small fossils containing putative spicules may spec...