Description

Inkrylovia lata
Ediacaran
Late Precambrian (Vendian)
Penega Formation
East Angelsk, white sea, Russia

(V-13) 4.4inches sea pen negative.

A “sea pen” is a colonial cnidarian, something like a mini sea anenome or a soft-bodied coral.  They live today and even date back to the Cambrian – even known from the Burgess Shale.

Sea pens from the Vendian Period are similar in appearance, and perhaps related, but they are different enough that paleontologists are not certain if they are ancestral to those of the Phanerozoic Eon.

The Vendian Period covers a span of geologic time from about 540 to 650 million years ago, which is the most recent block of the Proterozoic Eon.  It is the time that macroscopic life appeared – best known from areas like the Ediacara Hills, Australia, Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, and the White Sea.  By the end of the Vendian the supercontinent, Rodinia, which formed from the collisions of protocontinents approximately 1.2 billion years ago, had started to fragment into continents only a geologist would recognize today.  Those landmasses would reconnect at the end of the Paleozoic Era over 300 million years later.