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Abstract—The analysis of paleomagnetic data from Late Neoproterozoic complexes of Siberia and Australia is carried out. We show that the existing paleomagnetic datasets are in a disagreement with the concept of the axial-dipole configuration of the Late Neoproterozoic geomagnetic field: proposed non-actualistic models of the field do not reasonably explain the distribution of the paleomagnetic poles. We carried out analysis of paleomagnetic and virtual geomagnetic poles distribution based on simple geometric calculations. The analysis suggests that the configuration of the Late Neoproterozoic geomagnetic field was determined by the coexistence of a weak, long-lived source that was stably fixed in space, with a main dipole source that experienced sporadic multidirectional jumps within a certain preferred region of the Earth. Predominantly equatorial orientation of the main dipole source is substantiated by paleoclimate proxies. We propose a descriptive non-actualistic model of the Late Neoproterozoic geomagnetic field—the Devious Equatorial Dipole hypothesis, which brings paleomagnetic and paleoclimate data into accordance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently acquired seismic data in the eastern portion of the Amadeus Basin of central Australia have enabled disconformities at the base of both the Sturt and Elatina glaciogenic sequences within the Neoproterozoic succession to be mapped on a semi-regional scale. On a more detailed scale, along the shallowly shelving eastern flank of the basin, seismic data have revealed features that demarcate the transition from a grounded to floating, or possible absent, Sturt ice-sheet. Coincident with this transition is an extensive mound-like accumulation of glacial debris, some 10 to 15km wide, 300 m high and extending at least 150km subparallel to the northeast-southwest-oriented basin margin. This glacial debris entered the basin subglacially through meandering tunnel valleys, one of which can be mapped seismically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stratigraphy in Vines 1, a 2017.5 m-deep cored stratigraphic hole drilled by the Geological Survey of Western Australia in 2001 near the Western Australian - South Australian border, has been reinterpreted with implications for the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian geological history of the Officer Basin. A previous interpretation considered the intersected succession as a conformable stratigraphic package, the Vines Formation. An assemblage of palynomorphs, found throughout the hole and previously used to infer an age of no older than earliest Cambrian, is now thought to consist of contaminants. An older assemblage, which is considered to be reworked and inherited from underlying rocks, provides a new maximum age constraint of mid-Neoproterozoic. Based on sedimentological interpretations and comparisons with other drillholes in the western Officer Basin, and the succession in the eastern Officer Basin, the Vines 1 succession is reinterpreted as four discrete sedimentary packages, the Pirrilyungka (new name), Wahlgu, Lungkarta and Vines (redefined) Formations, in ascending order. The Pirrilyungka and Wahlgu Formations include glacigenic sediments and may correlate with similar glacial successions in Supersequences 2 and 3 (mid to late Cryogenian) of the Centralian Superbasin, and the Sturt Tillite and Elatina Formation and their equivalents in the Adelaide Rift Complex of South Australia, respectively. The eolian Lungkarta Formation and fluvial Vines Formation are considered, on regional evidence, to be most likely of Ediacaran to earliest Cambrian age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Up to the 1950s, the Precambrian was regarded as unrewardingly unfossiliferous, records of fossils being isolated, few in number and dubious. The change came with the discovery by Reg Sprigg of body fossils in latest Proterozoic sediments in South Australia. Although there had been descriptions of isolated fossils (now recognised as Ediacaran) from rocks of this age in the nineteenth century and at the start of the twentieth century, in Newfoundland and Namibia, respectively, the Ediacara finds stimulated researches and now, at the start of the twenty-first century, diversified fossil assemblages are known, all over the world, from the period 600–543 Ma, known formerly as the Vendian and now officially as the Ediacaran. In this account, a brief description of the history of these finds is given, followed by descriptions of the most important provinces [South Australia, Leicestershire, Namibia, Russia (Podolia, the White Sea Coast, Urals and Siberia), Newfoundland (Avalon Peninsula) and Northwest Canada]: then of 27 other known occurrences of this dominantly soft-bodied and perplexing fauna(?)–it seems certain that some, at least of the fossils, are animal fossils, although some, even the greater part, could be a unique form of life, not animals or plants (“Vendobionta”). These descriptions, derived in the course of a literature search lasting over a year, are followed by discussions of important special aspects: trace fossils; geochronology and correlation; geotectonics; glaciation (the “Snowball Earth” concept applied to the Varangian/Laplandian/Marinoan glaciation, which ushered in this last subdivision of the Proterozoic); the evidence for Ediacaran and other life forms existing in the Proterozoic prior to its last, Ediacaran, chronological subdivison; the Vendozoa concept. The last section consists of short summary of conclusions. This text essentially constitutes an objective record of what has been published to 2005 on the Ediacaran System. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although Earth is widely believed to have undergone a series of extreme low-latitude snowball glaciations during the Neoproterozoic (ca. 1000-543 Ma), only one reliable pa- leomagnetic result, from Elatina, South Australia, places glacial rocks close to the equator. We report new paleomagnetic data from the Neoproterozoic Huqf Supergroup of Oman that pass fold and reversal tests and yield a paleopole at 52.3°S, 074.4°E (N = 25 sites; α95 = 7.3°). This paleopole places the Muscat region of Oman at a latitude of 13° in the late Neoproterozoic and provides the first direct evidence that both glacial and overlying cap carbonate units were deposited in the tropics. The presence of glacial-interglacial cyclicity within the Huqf Supergroup indicates that areas close to the equator may have been largely free of ice at the time of deposition, a result that is inconsistent with the classic snowball Earth model. Our result precludes the possibility that contrasting lithologies mark a phase of rapid plate motion and provides the first evidence for low-latitude glaciation in Arabia. A series of magnetic reversals in the Fiq tillite and the overlying Had ash dolomite, in northern and central Oman, correlates well with a similar sequence in the Mirbat Formation in southern Oman and indicates that recovery from glacial conditions took place over long time scales (possibly >105_106 yr). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]