The Ediacaran Period (pronˌiːdiˈækərən,_ˌɛdi- ) is a geological period that spans 96 million years from the end of the Cryogenian Period 635 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Cambrian Period 538.8 Mya. It marks the end of the Proterozoic Eon, and the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is named after the Ediacara Hills of South Australia.
The Ediacaran Period's status as an official geological period was ratified in 2004 by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), making it the first new geological period declared in 120 years.
Although the period takes its name from the Ediacara Hills where geologist Reg Sprigg first discovered fossils of the eponymous Ediacaran biota in 1946, the type section is located in the bed of the Enorama Creek within Brachina Gorge in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, at .
The Ediacaran marks the first appearance of widespread multicellular fauna following the end of Snowball Earth glaciation events, the so-called Ediacaran biota, which is represented by now-extinct relatively simple animal phyla such as Proarticulata (bilaterians with articulation including Dickinsonia and Spriggina), Petalonamae (sea pen-like animals including Charnia), Disc-shaped forms (radial-shaped animals including Cyclomedusa) and Trilobozoa (animals with tri-radial symmetry including Tribrachidium). Most of those organisms appeared during or after the Avalon explosion event 575 million years ago and died out during an End-Ediacaran extinction event 539 million years ago. Some modern groups of animals also appeared during this period, including cnidarians and early bilaterians such as Xenacoelomorpha. Mollusc-like Kimberella also lived during the Ediacaran. Fossilized organisms with shells or skeletons were yet to evolve in the Cambrian, the superseding period of the Phanerozoic eon.
The supercontinent Pannotia formed and broke apart by the end of the period. The Ediacaran also witnessed several glaciation events, such as the Gaskiers and Baykonurian glaciations.
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The Ediacaran Period (pronˌiːdiˈækərən,_ˌɛdi- ) is a geological period that spans 96 million years from the end of the Cryogenian Period 635 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Cambrian Period 538.8 Mya. It marks the end of the Proterozoic Eon, and the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is named after the Ediacara Hills of South Australia. The Ediacaran Period's status as an official geological period was ratified in 2004 by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), making it the first new geological period declared in 120 years.
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. As of 2022, 2.16 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates—but it has been estimated there are around 7.
The Cambrian explosion, Cambrian radiation, Cambrian diversification, or the Biological Big Bang refers to an interval of time approximately in the Cambrian Period of early Paleozoic when there was a sudden radiation of complex life and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record. It lasted for about 13 – 25 million years and resulted in the divergence of most modern metazoan phyla. The event was accompanied by major diversification in other groups of organisms as well.
This is an introductory course on Elliptic Partial Differential Equations. The course will cover the theory of both classical and generalized (weak) solutions of elliptic PDEs.
Covers the principles and concepts of biomineralization, including the types of biominerals, induced vs. controlled biomineralization, and its impact on the biosphere.