Late Ediacaran life on land: desiccated microbial mats and large biofilm streamers

• Published in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
• Main Authors: McMahon, S., Matthews, J. J., Brasier, A., Still, J.
• Other Authors: NASA Astrobiology Institute, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Geological Society of London, Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 2021
• Subjects: Canada; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1875; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2021.1875; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rspb.2021.1875

The Ediacaran period witnessed transformational change across the Earth–life system, but life on land during this interval is poorly understood. Non-marine/transitional Ediacaran sediments preserve a variety of probable microbially induced sedimentary structures and fossil matgrounds, and the ecology, biogeochemistry and sedimentological impacts of the organisms responsible are now ripe for investigation. Here, we report well-preserved fossils from emergent siliciclastic depositional environments in the Ediacaran of Newfoundland, Canada. These include exquisite, mouldically preserved microbial mats with desiccation cracks and flip-overs, abundant Arumberia -type fossils and, most notably, assemblages of centimetre-to-metre-scale, subparallel, branching, overlapping, gently curving ribbon-like features preserved by aluminosilicate and phosphate minerals, with associated filamentous microfossils. We present morphological, petrographic and taphonomic evidence that the ribbons are best interpreted as fossilized current-induced biofilm streamers, the earliest record of an important mode of life (macroscopic streamer formation) for terrestrial microbial ecosystems today. Their presence shows that late Ediacaran terrestrial environments could produce substantial biomass, and supports recent interpretations of Arumberia as a current-influenced microbial mat fossil, which we here suggest existed on a ‘streamer–arumberiamorph spectrum’. Finally, the absence of classic Ediacaran macrobiota from these rocks despite evidently favourable conditions for soft tissue preservation upholds the consensus that those organisms were exclusively marine.