page_title: Dickinsonia
section_title: Discovery and naming
hierarchical_section_title: Dickinsonia / Discovery and naming
caption_attribution_description: English: Reconstruction of the proarticulatan Dickinsonia costata, of Precambrian Australia
context_page_description: Dickinsonia is an extinct genus of basal animal that lived during the late Ediacaran period in what is now Australia, Russia and Ukraine. The individual Dickinsonia typically resembles a bilaterally symmetrical ribbed oval. Its affinities are presently unknown; its mode of growth is consistent with a stem-group bilaterian affinity, though some have suggested that it belongs to the fungi, or even an "extinct kingdom". The discovery of cholesterol molecules in fossils of Dickinsonia lends support to the idea that Dickinsonia was an animal.
context_section_description: The first species and specimens of this fossil organism was first discovered in the Ediacara Member of the Rawnsley Quartzite, Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Additional specimens of Dickinsonia are also known from the Mogilev Formation in the Dniester River Basin of Podolia, Ukraine and from the Lyamtsa, Verkhovka, Zimnegory and Yorga Formations in the White Sea area of the Arkhangelsk Region, and Chernokamen Fm. of the Central Urals, Russia. These deposits have been dated to 567–550 Myr.
  Reg Sprigg, the original discoverer of the Ediacaran biota in Australia, described Dickinsonia, naming it after Ben Dickinson, then Director of Mines for South Australia, and head of the government department that employed Sprigg.
caption: Artist's reconstruction of Dickinsonia
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