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Winner Announcement !!

We are delighted to announce the results of our crowd sourcing competition, and thank all participants for their thoughtful contributions. According to Reddit, we received over 70 comments spread over their pages, along with a few submissions to the contest g-mail account. The panel of geologists assessed the submissions, and we decided to split the award among three submissions that are:

$200 “dainwaris” for Furongian Archaeocyathids

The rings marked the base of an organism that attached to the seafloor via a ring-like holdfast. This explanation is consistent with the form of the rings themselves, and with their non-overlapping distribution on surfaces with low density, and with form of the basal attachment zone of some attached sponges and corals. While we don’t think that an archaeocyathid is itself a likely candidate, partly because that group of sponges was extinct by the late Cambrian and also because the rings themselves show no sign of accretionary expansion of width, which would be expected if this was the holdfast of a growing attached animal, we think that temporary holdfast attachment of a motile anemone is a possible explanation. Thus although the archaeocyathid idea is unlikely to be specifically correct, it does lead us toward a plausible explanation more broadly consistent with the observations made.

$200 to each of “poletopole” and “juanupam” for Mollusc Egg Deposition Rings

Two submissions proposed the idea that the rings are structures related to reproduction, based on analogy with the egg collars of modern moon (naticid) snails. According to this view, the rings represent cone-shaped structures molded out of available sediment into which eggs were embedded. Naticid snails was not present in the late Cambrian, so the idea is that the Wisconsin rings are analogous structures that were independently evolved in some ancient organism. Features consistent with this interpretation include the crisp walls of the rings, with disturbed internal laminae, the size and spatial distribution of the rings on slabs (the tendency toward dispersed distribution and with the minimum size representing the onset of reproductive activity), and the sporadic nature of the ring-bearing laminae (consistent with an activity that occurs at particular times and places).

We received a wide array of suggestions, including biological structures such as body fossils or trace fossils attributes to organisms ranging from bacterial mats, through jellyfish, eelgrass, lotus pods, to puffer fish, and physical processes such as gas bubbles, non-equilibrium reactions, or diagenetic alteration. Contest entrants often also included links to relevant photographs or reports that were most illuminating. While a biological-physical-diagenetic array of suggestions was anticipated prior to the contest, several of the specific ideas were novel to us, and the exercise was of considerable value in widening and deepening consideration of the origin of these structures. We understand that over 6000 users accessed the pages with a worldwide distribution including much of Asia, Europe, Australisia, and South America in addition to North America and we thank all who took an interest in the project. Any scientific manuscript that describes the rings will attribute the selected ideas to the authors listed above.