Nuevo libro sobre la fauna de Ediacara

La Geological Society acaba de publicar un nuevo libro sobre la fauna de Ediacara titulado "The Rise and Fall of the Ediacaran Biota". Está editado por P. Vickers-Rich y P. Komarower. La fauna de Ediacara es el experimento de la vida más fascinante de la historia de la Vida. Estos organismos se extinguieron al final del Precámbrico y forman parte de una biota en la que no existían predadores. Os adjuntamos una reseña en inglés del libro. Se puede comprar en la Web de la Geological Society.

The Proterozoic and early Phanerozoic was a time punctuated by a series of significant events in Earth history. Glaciations of global scale wracked the planet, interfingered with dramatic changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry and marked changes in continental configuration. It was during these dynamic and ‘weedy’ times that metazoans first appeared. Their subsequent diversification culminated in the appearance of hard tissue skeletons and deep ‘farming’ of the marine substrate in late Proterozoic and first few millions of years of the Phanerozoic. The papers in this book deal specifically with the precise timing of physical events and teasing out of the effects which these changing environments, climates, global chemistry and palaeogeography had on the development and diversification of animals, resulting in the spectacular Ediacaran/Vendian faunas of the late Precambrian.