1. evolvingthoughts
  2. Cambrian fossils at Kangaroo Island

Cambrian fossils at Kangaroo Island

By evolvingthoughts on August 28, 2008.

Kangaroo Island is a largish island off the coast of South Australia, famous for its wildlife and food. It also has some of the best preserved Ediacaran Cambrian fossils, on a par with the famous Burgess Shale. A report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's TV show Catalyst recently showcased these, and interviewed my friend Chris Nedin as well as his colleagues Jim Gehling and Diego Garcia. Chris is the guy shown on the preview of the video. You can view the report on video, or read the transcript, courtesy of the ABC.

Here's a pic of Nedin showing us where the Ediacaran period starts, when he and I and friends Ian Musgrave and Jim Foley took a trip through the Flinders Ranges a few years back. He's way too fit, from his years of climbing shale cliffs (like he made us do on that trip).

i-bba5674c1f635eee1a60a8a587b5161b-IMG_3841_1.jpg

D'oh!: I should have said Cambrian not Ediacaran. I'm sorry, I have a cold.

Tags
evolution
Philosophy of Science

More like this

At last! An Australian geological period!
Just because a bunch of German, French and British people invented geology some 200 or more years ago, all the "type locations" for the geological column have been defined in terms of Northern Hemisphere locations. Finally, though, we Australians have our own period, and it's a doozy - the…
Explosions in the Garden of Ediacara
Some of the biggest misunderstandings about the evolution of life on earth surround the "Cambrian Explosion," the popular impression often being that complex multicellular life sprung up out of nowhere in an instant. While it does appear that there was an "explosion" and that new body plans…
The Earliest Known Metazoans
In 1964 S.B. Mirsa, a graduate student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, discovered a group of well-preserved fossilized soft-body animals. Subsequent research revealed the fauna were from the Ediacaran Period 635-542 million years ago. Ediacaran was not officially recognized as a…
Did the Cambrian Really Give Darwin Nightmares?
Considering the fossils of the Cambrian, the oldest fossil-bearing rocks known during his time, Charles Darwin wrote the following in the 6th edition of On the Origin of Species; ... it cannot be doubted that all the Cambrian and Silurian trilobites are descended from some on crustacean, which must…

famous for its wildlife and food.

The best chargrilled anomalocaris outside Canada.

I was wondering where they got those strange shrimps...

Any rabbit fossils?