The Ediacaran fauna (Australia) represents a completely distinct experiment in multicellular life, which will ultimately end with the Late Precambrian extinction. These are species that thrive on the seafloor, unrelated to any currently existing species. They are two-dimensional organisms, an alternative solution to the problem of gaining space: life could have taken the Ediacaran route or the modern, 3D route, but the former will be totally defeated after a long success, and we don’t know why. If the Ediacaran route had continued to thrive, we would have hardly ever developed internal organs, and animal life would have remained at the level of sheets and pancakes…
