Mistaken Point nominated for World Heritage designation

Image | Mistaken Point 20131003

Caption: The fossils embedded in rock at Mistaken Point are more than 565 million years old. (Submitted by Zach Bonnell)

The Mistaken Point ecological reserve has been put forward as a contender for the United Nation's World Heritage list.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, one of the UN's advisory bodies on heritage designations, recommended the addition of Mistaken Point as a World Heritage site in advance of the group's next meeting in Istanbul this summer.
Mistaken Point is home to the oldest-known evidence of early multi-cellular life — a 565-million-year-old sea floor that's been slowly exposed by the pounding Atlantic surf.
According to the group, the wealth of fossils at the site makes it worth a designation.
"Mistaken Point fossils constitute an outstanding record of a critical milestone in the history of life on Earth," their report read.