Description

Late Precambrian

Jampil Sandstone

Quarry created near the Yaryshiv and Mogilov villages, Ukraine

180mm slab several species, largest is 37mm

Jellyfish, Ediacaran.

Paliella is an animal at the very edge of scientific understanding.  It does not appear to be related to a known phyllum.  Medusinites is a disc-shaped animal that was at least similar to jellyfish.  Both lived during the Vendian Period and apparently died out just before the beginning of the Paleozoic.  This slab is one of the oldest fossil association pieces on the market.

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.