Ediacaran website

Vendia rachiata (?) which looks a bit like a trilobite but probably isn't

While browsing the internet for information on those strange ediacaran creatures I stumbled upon this russian website: http://vend.paleo.ru/ If you are interested in these mysterious creatures it's worth a look.

Although it is all in russian Babelfish does a fairly decent translation, here is their description of the site:

"Our laboratory is occupied by the complex of the early stages of the evolution of biosphere, which preceded the phanerozoic jump of bioraznoobraziya. Special attention in this case is paid to the vendskomu period as to the period, which completes the Proterozoic stage of the evolution of biosphere. For a long time considered as the almost silent, this section of geological chronicle is at the present time remarkable with this number of surprising findings of the remainders of undoubtedly organic nature, that it is possible to indicate that we already see the letters, which wrote the history of the evolution of the biosphere of that time, but yet we cannot understand entire text, which is collected by these letters. On this site are assembled the meaningful results of the work of our laboratory, materials about the directions of research activity, most significant publications, debatable materials."

Being russian they call this period (from the gaskiers glaciation to the cambrian, 632-542 MYA) the vendian even though the internationally accepted name is now the ediacaran.

There is lots of interesting stuff there, the best stuff is probably a nice selection of papers in english and russian that can be downloaded: http://vend.paleo.ru/pub_ru.php & http://vend.paleo.ru/pub_eng.php. Particularly good is 'Ivantsov Malakhovskaya 2003' which is in russian and has some amazing images of ediacaran fossils.

Their research is mainly conducted on the remarkable fossils found in cliffs by the white sea in russia. Other ediacaran localities are the Ediacra hills Australia, Mistaken point Canada, Charnwood in England and Namibia.

Tribrachidium heraldicum - deeply weird