The terminal Ediacaran Tongshan Lagerstätte from South China

Because the informative Burgess Shale-type preservation is uncommon in the Ediacaran, mouldic Ediacara-type preservation provides insight into the early evolution of organisms like metazoans (including typical fronds), protists, and algae. Here, we report the Burgess Shale-type preservation from the new Tongshan Lagerstätte ( ~ 551–543.74 ± 0.87 Ma), in carbonaceous mudstones/shales of the terminal Ediacaran Dengying Formation in Tongshan, Hubei, South China. The preservation of a high diversity of organisms indicates rapid, likely in situ burial in the marine photic zone below the storm wave base, revealing deep-water biodiversity coeval with the Nama Assemblage of Ediacara Biota. These are the first records, to our knowledge, of typical Ediacaran rangeomorph fronds with Burgess Shale-type preservation. The presence of Burgess Shale-type preservation of fronds reflects the rarity of fine-grained deposits in the Ediacaran Period and bridges an important gap between traditional Ediacara-type preservation, Ediacara-type preservation with organic remains, and Burgess Shale-type preservation. Here, the authors present Ediacaran fossils from the Tongshan Lagerstätte (South China), including Burgess Shale-type rangeomorphs preserved both with fronds and holdfasts. They use sedimentary and chemical evidence to suggest that fast burial and early diagenetic mineralization produced excellent preservation.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Nature Communications

• Publication date

  2025-11-19

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Geology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-65176-2PMID 41258088PMCID 12630636
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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