Studying the Ediacaran period though the examination of a fossil from the Deep Spring Formation of Nevada

Mia Schildbach

Mentor: Professor Emmy Smith

Supervisors: Lab technician Lucy Webb and Graduate Student Mary Lonsdale

Johns Hopkins University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Paleontologists study fossils to learn about ancient organisms and their environments. Many paleontologists specialize in particular intervals of Earth history, for this project I specialized in the Ediacaran Period (635-541 million years ago), the interval directly before the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion was a diversification event where many modern animal phyla evolved. By studying Ediacaran geology and fossils, scientists can better understand the causes of the Cambrian explosion and how life evolved and diversified. Ediacaran research is still very new, and researchers are constantly learning how organisms in the Ediacaran were more diverse and prevalent than previously thought. To learn about these organisms, researchers can analyze fossils like the one I researched. This fossil was analyzed by comparing its features with the features of fossils described in scientific papers. The fossil has also been analyzed through scanning electron microscopy with electron dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). The SEM-EDS analyses found that the fossil was preserved with chlorite minerals. This was unexpected, because it was originally hypothesized to have been preserved with pyrite. In the future I will continue analyzing the fossil by comparing and contrasting it with other known fossils. Every fossil analyzed gives researchers more data to investigate their hypotheses. In addition to providing information about Ediacaran organisms, the analysis of Ediacaran fossils could have implications for research into whether there was a mass extinction between the Ediacaran and the Cambrian.