Mistaken Point - Fossil Ecosystems of North America: A Guide to the Sites and their Extraordinary Biotas - page 16

H ISTORY OF DISCOVERY OF THE
M ISTAKEN P OINT BIOTA
The unusual and unexpected Ediacaran
fossils had first been discovered in the
Ediacara Hills of South Australia by
government geologist, Reg Sprigg, in 1946
(Sprigg, 1947), though at the time it was
assumed that they were Cambrian in age
simply because the Precambrian was
presumed to be devoid of macrofossils.
Their true age was not established until
10 years later when an English schoolboy,
Roger Mason, discovered similar fronds

and disc-like fossils from unequivocal
Precambrian strata in Charnwood Forest,
England, later described by Trevor Ford
of Leicester University (1958).
It was to be a further decade, however, in
the summer of 1967, before similar
primitive fossils were discovered at Mistaken
Point by Shiva Balak Misra, an Indian
graduate student from Newfoundland's
Memorial University. Misra was studying an
unmapped part of the Avalon Peninsula
( 15 ) when he came across a rich assemblage
of soft-bodied organisms on the bedding

15

Fermeuse Fm
Mistaken Point Fm
Gaskiers Fm

100 km

N

100 miles

NEWFOUNDLAND

St. John's

Avalon
Peninsula

Ferryland
Fermeuse

Burin
Peninsula

Cape Race

50 km

Mistaken Point
Portugal Cove South

Trepassey

50 miles

15 Locality map showing the Avalon Peninsula of southeast Newfoundland and outcrop of the
main stratigraphical units after Gehling et al., 2000.