Date: March 12, 2018
Source: Nagoya University
Summary:
Researchers discover penetrative
trace fossils from the late Ediacaran of western Mongolia, revealing earlier
onset of the “agronomic revolution”.
Researchers led by Nagoya
University discover penetrative trace fossils from the late Ediacaran of
western Mongolia, revealing earlier onset of the “agronomic revolution”.
In the history of life on Earth,
a dramatic and revolutionary change in the nature of the sea floor occurred in
the early Cambrian (541–485 million years ago): the “agronomic revolution.”
This phenomenon was coupled with the diversification of marine animals that
could burrow into seafloor sediments. Previously, the sea floor was covered by
hard microbial mats, and animals were limited to standing on, resting on, or
moving horizontally along those mats. In the agronomic revolution, part of the
so-called Cambrian Explosion of animal diversity and complexity, vertical
burrowers began to churn up the underlying sediments, which softened and
oxygenated the subsurface, created new ecological niches, and thus radically
transformed the marine ecosystem into one more like that observed today.
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