Primary producer dominated environments of the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: palaeontological insights from the Mackenzie Mountains, Canada

The early evolution of macroscopic life, including the Cambrian ‘explosion’ of animals, took place over more than 100 million years against the backdrop of dynamic environmental changes like unstable redox conditions and nutrient supply. The terminal Ediacaran to early Cambrian transition is marked by the appearance of macroscopic biomineralizers, but also a seeming decline in diversity, in contrast to rich communities of macroscopic Ediacara-type biota preserved in older units worldwide. Our understanding of this biotic change as well as its environmental divers suffers from stratigraphic incompleteness, as continuous mid and upper Ediacaran, and Cambrian strata are rarely exposed in a continuous sequence in the same area, or represent different depositional settings.

The Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories, Canada are a home to a nearly continuous sedimentary succession from the Cryogenian to the Cambrian and as such, provide a great target to analyse biotic and environmental changes through time. We have investigated the interval of carbonates and siliciclastics through the Blueflower, Risky, Ingta, Backbone, and Vampire formations and present integrated palaeontological and geochemical data to produce a high resolution biostratigraphic and chemostratigraphic profile for the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary interval.

The Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary occurs in the Ingta Formation, marked by sporadic trace fossils Treptichnus and Harlaniella. Simple surficial traces Planolites occur throughout the formation. Also common are well-preserved bacterial filamentous organic-walled microfossils in mudrocks, but the boundary interval lacks complex acritarchs or cuticular animal remains. Macroscopic carbonaceous fossil problematica were also recovered. Complex trace fossils occur in the overlying Backbone Ranges Formation and become more common in the Vampire Formation, but are absent from the lowermost Cambrian strata in the Mackenzie Mountains. The primary producer dominated environment and the absence of organically preserved animal remains in a setting conducive to organic preservation imply a true decline in diversity through the boundary interval – possibly a result of either phylogeny or ecology.