They are commonly categorized as Spindle-shaped (Fractofusus), Frond-shaped (Charniodiscus), or Bush-like / Radiating (Bradgatia) in form.

[6] In the summer of 1967, Shiva Balak Misra, an Indian graduate student (1966–69) at Newfoundland's Memorial University discovered a rich assemblage of imprints of soft bodied organisms on the surface of large rock slabs, while mapping the Conception Group of Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland near Cape Race, at a place called Mistaken Point.

[7] These unusual impressions of previously unknown soft-bodied sea animals on the surfaces of argillites (mudstone) included coelenterates and other metazoa of the Ediacarian period, 575 to 560 million years ago.

The description of the fossil assemblage together with their mode of occurrence, the cause of sudden death, ecological conditions and chronological position form part of Misra's detailed thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Science.

[9] Misra described the Mistaken Point fauna in detail in 1969, in a paper published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America.