Description

Andiva ivantsovi

Precambrian

Penega Formation

East Angelsk, White Sea, Russia

Huge 126mm animal on 214mm slab.

Ediacaran.  Problematica.

Andiva ivantsovi is a species of invertebrate that may belong to the proposed phylum, Proarticulata, which includes bilaterally symmetrical animals of the Vendian Period.  Andiva is also known from the Ediacara Hills, Australia.  It apparently died out by the end of the Precambrian.

The Vendian Period spans about the last 110 million years of the Proterozoic Eon from about 540 to 650 million years ago.  It is during this time that soft-bodied, macroscopic life appeared.  By the end of the Vendian the supercontinent, Rodinia, which formed from the collisions of the major land masses approximately 1.2 billion years ago, had started to fragment into continents that would reconnect at the end of the Paleozoic Era over 300 million years later.

See the Wikipedia article here: Andiva