The Ediacaran period (about 635–541 million years BC), is named after the Ediacara Hills of South Australia. It is the last geological period of the Proterozoic eon. The Edicaran is followed by the Cambrian, the first period of the Palaeozoic.

The period is famous for the first larger-bodied fossils, which are probably the first recorded metazoans. These were impressions or trace fossils, first found in England's Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire. Geologists did not know what they had found. It was over 60 years later before fossils from the same period were found in South Australia.