A new study provides insight into the paleoecology of Aspidella, one of the most abundant elements of the Ediacara biota. Ediacara biota refers to macroscopic, complex life that appears in the geological record just before the Cambrian explosion approximately 541 million years ago. Aspidella are disc-shaped fossils, and are likely to have been formed by organisms that anchored to sediments on the seafloor. A team of scientists has used geochemical analysis to examine whether or not Aspidella had a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms in the surrounding sediment, such as methanogens or sulfide-oxidizing bacteria.

The paper, “A geochemical study of the Ediacaran discoidal fossil Aspidella preserved in limestones: Implications for its taphonomy and paleoecology,” was published in the journal Geobiology. The research was supported by NASA Astrobiology through the Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology Program.