Morphological Comparison Between Microorganism Colonies And Ediacara-type Fossils

A number of microbial species are isolated from the natural environment, enriched and purely cultured. Forms of their colonies are compared with certain Ediacara-type fossils whose affinities has remained considerable controversial for many years. Firstly, our results show that Bacillus can form multi-level branch colonies with independent sectors, which resemble Albumares brunsae and Anfesta stankovskii in morphology and structure. Secondly, Yeast colonies can develop morphological features, such as circular outline and annulations, to resemble Beltanelloides sorichevae. Thirdly, morphological characters generally appear in Cyclomedusa species can also be observed on Mold colonies, e.g. disc-shaped contour, annulations, center salient point and radial grooves. Fourthly, iron bacteria colonies and Tirasiana concentralis, Cyclomedusa have similar morphology and structure. The study also found that microorganism colonies have rigid nature and are resistant to mechanical compaction to some extent. Therefore, it is entirely possible for such colonies to be preserved in rocks as impressions. This research implies that some of the Ediacarian fossils are likely to be impressions of microbial colonies.