Rangea was a centimetre- to decimetre-scale frond characterised by a repetitive pattern of self-similar branches and a sessile benthic lifestyle.

Fossils are typically preserved as moulds and casts exposing only a leafy petalodium, and the rarity and incompleteness of specimens has made it difficult to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3D) morphology of the entire organism.

The apices of the quilts are sharply delimited by wedge-shaped fields of either smooth or wrinkled relief that give this part of the body a scalloped appearance.

The highly ordered, complex branching of the structural elements of the frond is a common characteristic and possibly reflects an unusual environmental parameter in early Ediacaran seas.

[7] Rangea likely had a rigid or semi-rigid skeleton-like structure that prevented buckling or compression and maintained integrity during life.

Rangea is reconstructed as an immobile benthic creature, whose body consisted of three closely packed trough-shaped fronds enveloped by a mucous sheath.

[5] Gregory Retallack considered that Rangea is not a benthic shallow marine fossil comparable with a sea pen but an alga or fungus from tidal flat or fluvial environments,[8][9][10] however his theory about Ediacaran biota is controversial.