While some geological evidence was presented to suggest that earlier fossils did exist, for a long time this evidence was widely rejected. Fossils from the Ediacaran period, immediately preceding the Cambrian, were first found in 1868, but scientists at that time assumed there was no Precambrian life and therefore dismissed them as products of physical processes.[74] Between 1883 and 1909 Walcott discovered other Precambrian fossils, which were accepted at the time.