IT TAKES an age for events to happen in geology – and that includes naming new geological time periods. Around 580 million years after the first multicellular animals appeared in the fossil record, they have finally been assigned their own period, called the Ediacaran. It is the first new period designated for 120 years, and joins the Permian, Jurassic and Triassic among others.
Named after the hills in South Australia where geologist Reg Sprigg discovered an abundance of these marine fossils in 1946, the Ediacaran period was formally announced on 13 May following a meeting of the International Commission on Stratigraphy.…
