Abstract
THE fossil record sheds little light on the problem of metazoan origins. Most of the major metazoan phyla appear in the fossil record in the Cambrian but no ancestral organisms have been found in the Precambrian, although suitable non-metamorphosed Precambrian rocks exist1. The oldest known metazoan fossils (latest Precambrian) are those from the Ediacara formation, Australia2. These fossils represent soft-bodied metazoans, some of which have been assigned to the coelenterates, some to the annelids, while others are of uncertain phyla3. Glaessner suggests2 that the Ediacara animals may be significant as a stage in the evolution of small, soft-bodied animals to larger forms with the gradual acquisition of fossilizable exo-skeletons or shells.
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