Emblematic fossils being damaged by vandalism.
The Ediacaran age was the latest to be recognised by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. It is characterised by a series of enigmatic fossils found at a handful of sites worldwide that were first discovered in the Ediacara Hills of South Australia in 1943. A decade or so later a group of English schoolboys found an important fossil site in a quarry at Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire. These fossils proved that antecedents of the Cambrian explosion had teemed in the seas before the great radiation of species, proving Darwin’s inference that earlier life than the Cambrian would soonor or later be discovered.
Ediacaran fossils are rare, because they were soft bodied, without the easily fossilisable mineralised shells that prove such a boon to palaeontologists. One of the area’s Ediacaran sites at Bradgate Park, where the beds are next to a path, has been repeatedly vandalised by both graffiti artists and amateur fossil collectors, who try to chip away inexpertly at the hard metamorphic rock, shattering the 540 million year old fossils in the process. Normally such sites are kept secret or even guarded in order to ensure their preservation, but this location is impossible to disguise or easily protect. We often hear of fossil poaching in locations around the world such as Mongolia or the USA, but sometimes the damage to our heritage is somewhat closer to home.
The photo shows a specimen of Charnia Masonii, named after the forest and one of the boys who discovered the site. It is one of the largest Ediacaran species, measuring up to a metre in length. It is thought to have been a filter feeder related to Cnidarians (the organisms that produce modern corals), and to have lived attached to the sea bottom by a disc shaped holder.
Loz
Image credit: Andy Dingley, Wikimedia commons
http://www.theguardian.com/science/lost-worlds/2013/oct/11/british-fossils-vandalism-charnwood-forest
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacaran.php
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacara.html
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/charnia.html
http://www.lifebeforethedinosaurs.com/2011/08/charnia.html
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