ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Environmental drivers of the first major animal extinction across the Ediacaran White Sea-Nama transition.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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19 citing papers in PubMed, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Re-evaluating molecular clock maximum age calibrations revives pre-Ediacaran divergence estimates for animals.Science advances · 2026Article
- The influence of reproductive mode on resource competition and diversity patterns in Ediacaran early animal communities.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia.Science advances · 2026Article
- Unravelling echinoid mass mortalities: a global overview of mechanisms, spatio-temporal trends, and taxonomic insights.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- The terminal Ediacaran Tongshan Lagerstätte from South China.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Advent of three-dimensional sediment exploration reveals Ediacaran-Cambrian ecosystem transition.Science advances · 2025Article
- Sustained shift in the morphology of organic-walled microfossils over the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Maintenance of the great late Ediacaran ice age.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Dynamic simulations of feeding and respiration of the early Cambrian periderm-bearing cnidarian polyps.eLife · 2025Article
- Co-occurrence structure of late Ediacaran communities and influence of emerging ecosystem engineers.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Sea level controls on Ediacaran-Cambrian animal radiations.Science advances · 2024Article
- Dawn of diverse shelled and carbonaceous animal microfossils at ~ 571 Ma.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- New insight into the global record of the Ediacaran tubular morphotype: a common solution to early multicellularity.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Article
- A Great late Ediacaran ice age.National science review · 2023Article
- Recurrent photic zone euxinia limited ocean oxygenation and animal evolution during the Ediacaran.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Nitrate limitation in early Neoproterozoic oceans delayed the ecological rise of eukaryotes.Science advances · 2023Article
- Causes and consequences of end-Ediacaran extinction: An update.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2023Review
- Article
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9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Ediacara Biota-the oldest communities of complex, macroscopic fossils-consists of three temporally distinct assemblages: the Avalon (ca. 575-560 Ma), White Sea (ca. 560-550 Ma), and Nama (ca. 550-539 Ma). Generic diversity varies among assemblages, with a notable decline at the transition from White Sea to Nama. Preservation and sampling biases, biotic replacement, and environmental perturbation have been proposed as potential mechanisms for this drop in diversity. Here, we compile a global database of the Ediacara Biota, specifically targeting taphonomic and paleoecological characters, to test these hypotheses. Major ecological shifts in feeding mode, life habit, and tiering level accompany an increase in generic richness between the Avalon and White Sea assemblages. We find that ∼80% of White Sea taxa are absent from the Nama interval, comparable to loss during Phanerozoic mass extinctions. The paleolatitudes, depositional environments, and preservational modes that characterize the White Sea assemblage are well represented in the Nama, indicating that this decline is not the result of sampling bias. Counter to expectations of the biotic replacement model, there are minimal ecological differences between these two assemblages. However, taxa that disappear exhibit a variety of morphological and behavioral characters consistent with an environmentally driven extinction event. The preferential survival of taxa with high surface area relative to volume may suggest that this was related to reduced global oceanic oxygen availability. Thus, our data support a link between Ediacaran biotic turnover and environmental change, similar to other major mass extinctions in the geologic record.
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