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planes of mudstones exposed at Mistaken
Point ( 16, 17 ). Some of these he recognized
as comparable to the Australian forms, but
most were unique and defied identification.
The discovery was immediately reported
in Nature (Anderson and Misra, 1968), but,
just as with the Gunflint biota described in
Chapter 1, the organic nature of these
fossils was initially doubted until subse-
quent reports documented the entire
diverse assemblage (Misra, 1969). Misra
classified the primitive animals into four
groups, namely spindle-shaped, leaf-
shaped, round-lobate, and dendrite-like,
and believed that most of them represented
polyp and medusoid forms of cnidarians.
Ironically, the most common of these
fossils ( Aspidella terranovica ) had actually
been described from Newfoundland
almost 100 years previously (Billings, 1872)
from beds 1 km (0.62 miles) higher in the
succession, but had been dismissed by most
authorities as an inorganic pseudo-fossil
simply because it was Precambrian in age.
As has now been pointed out by Gehling et
al . (2000), Aspidella was actually the first
named member of the Ediacaran biota
from anywhere in the world.
16
16 Mistaken Point on the
southernmost tip of the Avalon
Peninsula, southeast
Newfoundland.
17
17 Bedding planes of mudstones
with soft-bodied fossils exposed
at Mistaken Point.
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