What Types of Modern Phyla were Found in the Ediacaran Period?
For many decades, scientists thought that multicellular life didn’t exist before the dawn of the Cambrian period, 542 million years ago. Then, in 1967, a careful geological study of pre-Cambrian rock beds turned up frond-like organisms called Charnia. This was the first time that definitive pre-Cambrian metazoan fossils had been found, and it created a sensation. Since then, over 18 fossil beds from the Ediacaran period (before the Cambrian) have been found, with over 100 different types of organisms dating back to 600 million years ago. Scientists get into deep arguments over whether these ancient forms are related to modern-day animals, and the consensus is that some of them are. Though common knowledge states that modern phyla have their origin in the Cambrian explosion about 520 million years ago, recent findings have confirmed representatives of modern phyla in the Ediacaran period. Some of these likely represent stem groups that bear little to no relation to living forms. The phy
