Fractofusus misrai

Fractofusus misrai
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Order:	Rangeomorpha
Genus:	Fractofusus
Species:	Fractofusus misrai Gehling et Narbonne, 2007
Binomial name
Fractofusus misrai

Fractofusus misrai is an Ediacaran fossil discovered in 1967 by S.B. Misra at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, which has since become the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve. It was named after Professor Misra in 2007.

In the summer of 1967, S.B. Misra, an Indian graduate student (1966–69) at Newfoundland's Memorial University discovered a rich assemblage of imprints of soft bodied organisms on the surface of large rock slabs, while mapping the Conception Group of Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland near Cape Race, at a place called Mistaken Point.

These unusual impressions of previously unknown soft-bodied sea animals on the surfaces of argillites (mudstone) included coelenterates and other metazoa of the Ediacarian period, 575 to 560 million years ago. These fossils are records of the oldest known complex life forms that existed anywhere on Earth. Misra was the first to prepare and present a systematic geological map of the region, to classify and describe the rock sequence of the area and to work out the depositional history of the rocks.

The description of the fossil assemblage together with their mode of occurrence, the cause of sudden death, ecological conditions and chronological position form part of Misra's detailed thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Science. The discovery was reported in a 1968 letter to Nature. Misra described the Mistaken Point fauna in detail in 1969, in a paper published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America.

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