Acritarch

Acritarchs; Temporal range: 1600–0 Ma Pha. Proterozoic Archean Had. [inconsistent]
	A supposed Ediacaran embryo contained within an acritarch from the Doushantuo Formation
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	incertae sedis
(unranked):	†Acritarcha; Evitt, 1963
Synonyms
	Hystrichospheres p.p.;

Acritarchs are organic microfossils, known from approximately 1800 million years ago to the present.^{[inconsistent]} The classification is a catch all term used to refer to any organic microfossils that cannot be assigned to other groups. Their diversity reflects major ecological events such as the appearance of predation and the Cambrian explosion.

^ Cunningham, John A.; Vargas, Kelly; Yin, Zongjun; Bengtson, Stefan; Donoghue, Philip C. J. (2017). "The Weng'an Biota (Doushantuo Formation): An Ediacaran window on soft-bodied and multicellular microorganisms". Journal of the Geological Society. 174 (5): 793–802. Bibcode:2017JGSoc.174..793C. doi:10.1144/jgs2016-142. hdl:1983/d874148a-f20e-498a-97d2-379b3feaa18a.

[1] Cunningham, John A.; Vargas, Kelly; Yin, Zongjun; Bengtson, Stefan; Donoghue, Philip C. J. (2017). "The Weng'an Biota (Doushantuo Formation): An Ediacaran window on soft-bodied and multicellular microorganisms". Journal of the Geological Society. 174 (5): 793–802. Bibcode:2017JGSoc.174..793C. doi:10.1144/jgs2016-142. hdl:1983/d874148a-f20e-498a-97d2-379b3feaa18a.

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