The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) was the most rapid and sustained increase in marine Phanerozoic biodiversity. What generated this biotic response across Palaeozoic seascapes is a matter of debate; several intrinsic and extrinsic drivers have been suggested. One is Ordovician climate, which in recent years has undergone a paradigm shift from a text-book example of an extende...

Well-preserved miospore assemblages are recorded from the Late Ordovician (Katian-Hirnantian), Ghelli Formation in Pelmis-gorge at the north-eastern Alborz Mountain The palynomorphs were extracted from siliciclastic deposits which are well-dated by using of marine palynomorphs (acritarchs and chitinozoans). The encountered miospore assemblages consist of 14 genera (28 species: 26 cryptospores a...

BACKGROUND During the Ordovician the global diversity increased dramatically at family, genus and species levels. Partially the diversification is explained by an increased nutrient, and phytoplankton availability in the open water. Cephalopods are among the top predators of today's open oceans. Their Ordovician occurrences, diversity evolution and abundance pattern potentially provides informa...

Contrasts between the Cambrian Explosion (CE) and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) have long been recognized. Whereas the vast majority of body plans were established as a result of the CE, taxonomic increases during the GOBE were manifested at lower taxonomic levels. Assessing changes of ichnodiversity and ichnodisparity as a result of these two evolutionary events may shed...

. Early to middle Paleozoic arbonates ofeastern North America have been pervasively remagnetized. In order to determine the process of remagnetization, scanning and scanning transmission electron microscopy have been used to characterize magnetite in thin sections and in concentrated separates. Samples included Ordovician Knox carbonates from east Tennessee, Ordovician Trenton limestone and Dev...

Ordovician and Silurian glacial erratics of the Laerheide area (Lower Saxony, north-western Germany) bear well-preserved graptolites. The faunas provide important information on the origin and transport direction of the sediments preserved in a kame, representing the Drenthe stadial of the Saalian glaciation. The faunas even include species not commonly encountered in the successions of mainlan...

animal life on land. The current benchmark for evidence of plants on land is about 450,000,000 years ago (Late Ordovician). Tantalizing microscopic fossils of chemically resistant spore walls occur in land-derived rocks around the world, and predate this Late Ordovician age by over 50,000,000 years (Upper Cambrian) and possibly beyond. Figuring out what kinds of organisms (algae, primitive plan...

Isotope data from bulk carbonates, micrite, marine calcite cements, non-skeletal grains and brachiopods indicate deposition of a wide spectrum of warm to cold water carbonates during the Ordovician and the Jurassic. This isotopic interpretation is supported by warm to cold climatic models proposed for the Ordovician and the Jurassic. These carbonates formed during the Greenhouse mode (condition...

Graptolite rhabdosomes display a diverse suite of morphologies. The range of morphotypes present within most moderate to high diversity assemblages from the Ordovician and Silurian is similar, despite the different taxonomic composition of the faunas at different times. Survivorship analyses of graptolite faunas from the Ordovician and Silurian demonstrate strong similarities in the mortality r...

Phyllite and quartzite, probably Precambrian, trend meridionally and dip steeply in the New River Gorge above the junction with the Salisbury River in southern Tasmania. Further upstream an association of silty dolomite and conglomerate is less deformed and may be younger. Siliceous conglomerate boulders occur in the New River below the gorge. Late Ordovician carbonates of the Gordon Group are ...