A Middle Cambrian age for the Ediacara-type fauna from the Booley Bay Formation, County Wexford, Ireland: new acritarch data and their implications

Ten years ago a well-preserved Ediacara-type fauna was recorded for the first time in sediments at the type section of the Lower Palaeozoic Booley Bay Formation in County Wexford, Ireland (Crimes et alii, 1995). Four microfossil samples were collected from mudstones intercalated in sandstone beds. These yielded an acritarch fauna that (Moczydlowska & Crimes, 1995) considered to indicate a late Late Cambrian age for the Ediacara-type fauna. They proposed that this find extended the known stratigraphic range of Ediacara-type fauna from the Neoproterozoic to the Late Cambrian, rather than to the Middle Cambrian as had been indicated previously (Conway Morris, 1993).