Ediacaran Honour

During the last week of Term 4, some Year 8 students at Seymour College were lucky enough to rub shoulders with Ediacaran royalty, as Old Collegian, Mary Lou Simpson (McArthur, ’70) dropped into Barr Smith House for some morning tea.

The students have recently been covering the Ediacaran fossils, as part of their STEM course. They were able to share their work and findings with Mary Lou whilst asking questions of their own about her involvement in the Flinders Ranges Ediacaran Fossil story.

However, the get-together was primarily arranged to acknowledge that a new Ediacaran fossil has been named in honour of Mary Lou and her husband, Antony.

The fossil, named, Quaestio simpsonorum was unearthed in the Flinders and is revealing more fascinating information about the first multicellular lifeforms, which lived on the seafloor over half a billion years ago. Its discovery is attracting international attention from palaeontologists and evolutionary and developmental biologists.

Quaestio simpsonorum carries the genus name Quaestio for the ridge in its centre that is shaped like a question mark.

Entirely new to science, simpsonorum joins more than a hundred multicellular organisms so far identified from the Ediacaran period – an era some 635 to 538 million years ago – when the first complex, macroscopic animals emerged on Earth.

Mary Lou feels very honoured that her supportive role has been acknowledged in this way. It puts her on the same footing as Sir David Attenborough and former US president, Barack Obama, who also have Ediacaran fossils named after them.

If the Seymour students are looking for women of strength, optimism and justice – they should look no further than Mary Lou Simpson!

Trevor Stephenson

Middle Years Science Teacher, Seymour College