The Ediacara biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms which lived during the Ediacaran Period (c. 635–542 Ma). Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms. The Ediacara biota radiated in an event called the Avalon Explosion, 575 million years ago, after the Earth had thawed from the Cryogenian period's extensive glaciation, and largely disappeared contemporaneous with the rapid appearance of biodiversity known as the Cambrian explosion. Most currently existing body-plans of animals first appeared only in the fossil record of the Cambrian rather than the Ediacaran. For macroorganisms, the Cambrian biota completely replaced the organisms that populated the Ediacaran fossil record.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacara_biota

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1886:

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was found dead in Lake Starnberg near Munich under mysterious circumstances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_II_of_Bavaria

1955:

Soviet geologists discovered the Mir mine (pictured), the first diamond mine in the USSR and the second largest excavated hole in the world, in Eastern Siberia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_mine

1981:

English teenager Marcus Sarjeant fired six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth II as she rode down The Mall to the Trooping the Colour ceremony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Sarjeant

1996:

After an 81-day standoff sparked by their refusal to be evicted from their foreclosed property in Jordan, Montana, US, the Christian Patriot group Montana Freemen surrendered to the FBI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Freemen

2010:

The Japanese Hayabusa space mission became the first to return samples of an asteroid (25143 Itokawa) to Earth for analysis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

corniche: A road built alongside a sea, especially one cut into a cliff. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/corniche

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. --John Forbes Nash https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash