Neoproterozoic Era
1B - 541 659

Ediacaran Period 635 - 541 94 600 Kata Tjuṯa, Olgas rock formations 360km/220mi SW Alice Springs 600 Chief Mountain Precambrian  block  above 400-500 million years  younger Cretaceous gray shales.    Montana E  Glacier National Park 600  Red Rock area was under an ocean basin during the Paleozoic Era 600 million years ago. <2700m/9000' limey sediment becomes limestone 600 - 542 Ediacaran biota life of Ediacon Period 600 It is thought that earliest multicellular life on Earth was a sponge-like creature. ? Sponges among simplest animals, partially differentiated tissues but without muscles, nerves, or internal organs. Sponges ( Porifera) are phylogenetically oldest animal phylum extant today. In some ways they are closer to being cell colonies than multicellular organisms. 580 - 0 Red paper lantern jellyfish Pandea rubra N Pacific & N Atlantic 558 - 555 3 Kimberella quadrata, Mr. John Kimber's one, Australia & Russia 580 - 550 30 Eoandromeda octobrachiata, Doushantuo formation, China 580 movement of all animals may have started with cnidarians. Almost all cnidarians possess nerves & muscles and, because they are simplest animals to possess it, their direct ancestors were very likely first animals to use nerves & muscles together. Cnidarians are also first animals with an actual body of definite form & shape. They have radial symmetry. 579,880,000 - 579,630,000 <340,000  Gaskiers glaciation is a period widespread glacial deposits 579 - 555 24 Charnia masoni, Leicestershire, England 575 - 0 Botrynema brucei N Atlantic 575 - 0 Turritopsis nutricula Carribean sea 575 - 0 Poertuguese man o' war Physalia physalis Tropical zone 571 - 541 30 Dickinsonia costata, Russia, Ediacaran 575 Avalon explosion fauna Avalon Peninsula, proposed evolutionary radiation in Animalia 575 - 0 Orange sea pen Ptilosarcus gurneyi Western  N America  558 - 555 3 Tribrachidium heraldicum, Ukraine, Russia & Australia 555 diverse Ediacaran community was discovered in 1995 in Sonora, Mexico 555 Mollusc-like Kimberella and its trace fossils 555  Coronacollina acula, Asia minor 555  Spriggina floudersi, Australia 550 - 330 20 Proto-Tethys Ocean 550 First Cloudina & Namacalathusmineral tubular fossils 550 Flatworm earliest animals to have a brain, & simplest animals alive to have bilateral symmetry. They are also simplest animals with organs that form from three germ layers. 580 - 0 Platytrochozoa Basal Clade 550 - 180 370 Gondwana (South America, Africa, peninsular India, Australia, & Antarctica) to south. 549 - 530 Baykonurian glaciation  4 Ernietta plateauvensis, Dabis formation, Namibia, Ediacaran, 548 Ma 547 Baykonurian glaciation peak contributor to the Cambrian explosion. Its deposits are known in  Baykonur Formation in Central Asia and Africa 6 Amplectobelua symbrachiata, Burgess Shale, Canada, Middle Cambiran 525 Ma 542 Treptichnus pedum  1st preserved burrow of an animal 542 Foraminifera Latin for "hole bearers", informally called "forams" members of phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular extoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly an external shell ("test") of diverse forms & materials.