Rangea

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Rangea is an Ediacaran frond fossil.

The features found in Rangea are a double-layered quilted structure, a tripartite stemless body with fourfold radial symmetry, a mucous-supported sheath, smooth surface, radial membranes, and internal organs that are a system of sacs connected by a medial canal.

Rangea is realtively small in size.

It was named by Gurich in 1929.

There are four known species, R. arborea, R. grandis and R. longa discovered by Glaessner & Wade in 1966, and also the original Rangea schneiderhoehoni.

It is found in Namibia, Mistaken Point and Newfoundland.

Rangea seems to have lived embedded in the surface of the sediment of the sea.

Rangea has been interpreted as a pennatulacean octocoral, a sea pen, or a multinucleate eukaryotic cell.

Similar organisms are Bomakellia with four fold symmetry, and Thaumaptilon, Charnia, Charniodiscus, Paracharnia which are other fronds. One classification scheme by Pfug is class Rangeomorpha, family Rangeidae. An alternate scheme places it in the Petalonamae group. A generic term for these is rangeomorphs which display fractal branching (rather like a fern).

• Glaessner, Martin F.; Wade, Mary 1966: The late Precambrian fossils from Ediacara, South Australia. Palaeontology 9 (4), pp. 599-628.
• Gurich, G. 1930: Uber den Kuibisquarzit in Sudwestafrika. Z. deutsch. geol. Ges. 82: 637.