Discover Canada and Explore the Fossils and Geodiversity of Mistaken Point in Newfoundland
- Wayne Munday
- Sep 26
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 23
Sip back and discover Canada and explore the fossils and geodiversity of Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula one of the world’s most important fossil sites preserving an extraordinary record of early complex life. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016 and later recognised by the IUGS as a Geological Heritage Site, its tilted mudstone and sandstone cliffs hold fossils dating back to between 579 - 560 million years ago. These layers capture the enigmatic Ediacaran biota, soft-bodied organisms such as rangeomorphs, Charniodiscus, and Bradgatia, which formed some of the earliest known multicellular ecosystems. Exceptional preservation resulted from rapid burial by volcanic ash and the stabilising influence of microbial mats on the deep seafloor. The Drook, Mistaken Point and Trepassey formations together provide a continuous archive of deep-marine environments where fossilised bedding planes record entire seafloor communities. Mistaken Point predates the Cambrian Explosion offering a unique window into the dawn of animal life and the world’s earliest large multicellular organisms the metazoans.
On the southeastern edge of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula lies a headland where steep cliffs meet the restless waters of the North Atlantic. The coastline of Mistaken Point appears at first to be a stark and forbidding landscape of dark mudstone and sandstone tilted toward the sea. Yet these grey rocks, battered by waves and wind, preserve one of the most extraordinary fossil records on Earth. Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, this is the place that captures a moment in Earth’s history when the first large complex multicellular organisms evolved nearly 600 million years ago.
This remote and windswept place is about 150 kilometers south of St. John’s and has become internationally renowned for its fossils. In 2022, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) recognised Mistaken Point as one of the “First 100 Geological Heritage Sites,” underscoring its global importance. For visitors this is where Earth’s deep past is literally etched with remarkable detail into the rock telling a story of the dawn of animal life.
Mistaken Point takes its name from maritime history. Shrouded in fog for much of the year this craggy headland has historically proved treacherous for many sailors navigating Newfoundland’s coast leading to countless navigational mishaps and hence the name “Mistaken Point.” Today, instead of shipwrecks it is the fossil beds of the earliest metazoans that draw visitors. Access is carefully controlled through guided hikes led by local interpreters ensuring and fossil collecting is prohibited so the area remains protected while allowing visitors to experience them firsthand. Visitors can begin their journey at the Edge of Avalon Interpretive Centre in Portugal Cove South, before setting out along coastal trails.
The ecological reserve stretches across 17Km of tilted coastal cliffs. These exposures reveal layers of deep-marine mudstone and sandstone that accumulated more than half a billion years ago. The result is a continuous fossil record that is unrivaled in both scale and preservation. The fossils here are not scattered fragments of bones or shells but instead are trace fossils of entire seafloor communities preserved in place creating a unique archive of an ancient ecosystem.
The fossils of Mistaken Point belong to the Ediacaran Period the final chapter of the Neoproterozoic Era preceding the Cambrian Explosion. The organisms preserved at Mistaken Point are part of the enigmatic Ediacaran biota. Ediacaran biota are soft-bodied organisms preserved in ocean-floor sediments and as trace fossils that document the first complex movement and burrowing. Extensive microbial mats draped the seafloor providing food and attachment surfaces. Rising atmospheric and oceanic oxygen during the Ediacaran helped enable greater body size and ecological complexity setting environmental preconditions for the diversification of life in the Cambrian. The Ediacaran Period takes its name from the Ediacaran Hills in the northern part of the Flinders Ranges of South Australia.
Lasting for nearly 100 million years the Ediacaran bridges the transition between a world dominated by microbes and algae and the later explosion of diverse animal life during the Cambrian. It was during this time that multicellular organisms began to “get big,” forming bodies large enough to be preserved in the rock record.
At Mistaken Point the fossil-bearing rock holds among the oldest known assemblages of large multicellular life. For nearly three billion years prior the Earth’s biosphere had been dominated by microscopic bacteria and single-celled eukaryotes. The Ediacaran marked the beginning of something new where organisms became visible with bodies organised into tissues and fractal geometries or structure that reflects distinctive body parts. The timing of this transition is critical in Earth history. The Ediacaran fossils of Newfoundland predate the famous “Cambrian Explosion” showing that large complex life did evolve well before skeletons, shells and predators.
The preservation of Mistaken Point’s fossils is the outcome of extraordinary geological conditions. During the late Precambrian, the Avalon Peninsula lay within a volcanic arc system on the margins of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. Mistaken Point has an sequence of Ediacaran-aged deep-marine rock formations. At the base is the Drook Formation a fine-grained turbidite sediment composed of sandstones, siltstones, and mudstones deposited in sunlight-deprived waters well below the photic zone or the the upper layer of water where sunlight penetrates sufficiently for photosynthesis to occur. These sediments were blanketed by microbial mats forming a stable seafloor to supported early deep-sea ecosystems.
The Mistaken Point Formation above the Drook Formation contains the imprinted negative relief molds of fossils preserved by the rapid burial under volcanic ash during submarine eruptions that protected them from decay and physical disturbance. The lack of oxygen in these deep-marine settings further inhibited decay while the fine particles captured delicate details of body form. Capping the sequence, the Trepassey Formation an additional deep-marine turbidites and volcanogenic deposits that also preserves fossil assemblages. These formations tell a story of a late Precambrian deep-water environment rich in early multicellular life now safeguarded within the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve.
This process happened not once, but many times over a span of 20 million years. Each ash deposit created a bedding plane that preserved a “snapshot” of life at that moment, freezing organisms in a living position. Unlike most fossil localities, Mistaken Point does not merely preserve individuals but entire communities.
The most notable fossils are rangeomorphs. Their modular construction produced enormous surface area relative to their smaller volume suggesting that they absorbed nutrients directly from seawater. This unusual morphology suited the dark nutrient-rich depths of the Avalon seafloor.
Fractofusus is among the most abundant fossils found at Mistake Point. A spindle-shaped organism that could grow over a meter long. Its fossils show clustered arrangements, suggesting it reproduced both by releasing waterborne propagules or dispersal structures adapted to survive in water currents to establish in new locations along with stolon like runners to reproduce and colonise across the microbial mat.
Charniodiscus grew upright, anchored by a holdfast disk and rising into the water column with a flexible frond. It may have filtered nutrients from passing currents functioning like a modern suspension feeder.
Bradgatia resembled a leafy brassica with overlapping fronds radiating from a central point. Some specimens reached half a meter across dominating their patch of seafloor. The bedding planes of Mistaken Point are remarkable not only for individual fossils but also for the ecological structure they reveal. Flat-lying organisms such as Fractofusus occupied the microbial mats, while upright forms like Charniodiscus and Bradgatia projected into the water. This arrangement suggests that each were defining a niche in building a complex ecosystem.
After the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition soft-bodied organisms of the Ediacaran disappear and are replaced by an explosion of mineralised skeletons, shells and diverse body plans. This transition is often interpreted as the first mass extinction of complex life and was potentially driven by the rise of predation and ecological competition.
Standing on the cliffs of Mistaken Point it is difficult to imagine the world as it was nearly 600 million years ago. Yet beneath your feet lie the preserved fossils of organisms that represent the dawn of complex life. These fossils mark the threshold between a microbial planet and one teeming with visible biodiversity.
