Mawsonites
Mawsonites is a fossil genus dating to the Ediacaran Period, from 635–539 million years ago during the Precambrian era. The type species is Mawsonites spriggi. The names derive from South Australian geologists Douglas Mawson and Reg Sprigg.

Nordelch · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- CnidariaPBDB
- Diet
- osmotrophPBDB
- Life habit
- intermediate-level epifaunalPBDB
- Motility
- stationary, attachedPBDB
- Environment
- marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At most 97 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 635 Mya and 538.8 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
4 occurrences of Mawsonites on record. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
4 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
4 formations
- Zimnie Gory Formation · Ust-Pinega Group1
- Verkhovka Formation1
- Rawnsley Quartzite Formation · Wilpena Group1
- Blueflower Formation1
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The named rock units Mawsonites has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Found in the same rock
53 taxa- Aspidella2 sites
- Dickinsonia2 sites
- Dickinsonia costata2 sites
- Dickinsonia tenuis2 sites
- Ediacaria2 sites
- Palaeopascichnus2 sites
- Tribrachidium heraldicum2 sites
- Yorgia2 sites
- Albumares1 site
- Andiva1 site
- Anfesta1 site
- Anfesta stankovskii1 site
- Arborea arborea1 site
- Arborea longa1 site
- Armillifera parva1 site
- Aspidella terranovica1 site
- Beltanelliformis1 site
- Brachina1 site
- Charnia gracilis1 site
- Charnia grandis1 site
- Charnia masoni1 site
- Conomedusites lobatus1 site
- Cyanorus singularis1 site
- Dickinsonia elongata1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Mawsonites, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
4 references- Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia1
- Patterns of distribution in the Ediacaran biotas: facies versus biogeography and evolution1
- Age of Neoproterozoic bilatarian body and trace fossils, White Sea, Russia: implications for metazoan evolution1
- The late Precambrian fossils from Ediacara, South Australia1
Each of the 4 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Mawsonites
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Nordelch
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mawsonites was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Mawsonites”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCnidaria through time
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Glaessner and Wade 1966