Dickensonia fossil in the Flinders Ranges
Virtual Field Trip to beyond the Cambrian Explosion
Around a hundred million years before the Cambrian explosion that result in humans, another complex lifeform arose on Earth and disappeared. The Ediacaran biota - soft-bodied animals - do not seem to fit onto the Tree of Life that describes the evolution of life on Earth in its three branches - bacteria, archaea (both single-celled), and eukaryotes (multicelled life).
The NASA Astrobiolgy teamsat Arizona State University and MIT have joined forcesto produce a Virtual Field Trip of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia where the first Ediacaran fossils were recognised for what they were - an early form of multicellular life on Earth. I am on both teams because of my earlier work in collaboration with NASA on the Pilbara VFT.
The Flinders VFT represents the first of a new set of VFTs using new technologies that allow access via the web, rather than on a DVD as for for Pilbara. It employs three-dimensional sphericals of the relevant sites in the Flinders embedded with gigapans - up to 1,200 images in one that allows examination of fossils down to a grain of sand - as well as videos and images that act as a field guide for beginners to the more advanced field explorer.
Another Australian site will be Shark Bay in Western Australia where modern-day microbial mats known as stromatolites are found. Such mats are found in the Pilbara in Western Australia fossiised in strata that are 3.42 billion years old. If past life is found on Mars, it could be in the form of such fossilised mats. The original Pilbara VFT may also be remade using the new technologies.
Other field trips of astrobiological interest will also be added, notably Yellowstone National Park where the first extremophiles were found (microbes living in extreme conditions such as extreme cold or heat, high salinity, high pressure, and radioactive environments).