BACKGROUND Sphaerexochinae is a speciose and widely distributed group of cheirurid trilobites. Their temporal range extends from the earliest Ordovician through the Silurian, and they survived the end Ordovician mass extinction event (the second largest mass extinction in Earth history). Prior to this study, the individual evolutionary relationships within the group had yet to be determined uti...

There are few sponges known from the end-Ordovician to early-Silurian strata all over the world, and no records of sponge fossils have been found yet in China during this interval. Here we report a unique sponge assemblage spanning the interval of the end-Ordovician mass extinction from the Kaochiapien Formation (Upper Ordovician-Lower Silurian) in South China. This assemblage contains a variet...

The catastrophic disruption of the L chondrite parent body in the asteroid belt c. 470 Ma initiated a prolonged meteorite bombardment of Earth that started in the Ordovician and continues today. Abundant L chondrite meteorites in Middle Ordovician strata have been interpreted to be the consequence of the asteroid breakup event. Here we report a zircon U-Pb date of 467.50±0.28 Ma from a distinct...

Calcareous skeletons evolved as part of the greater Ediacaran/Cambrian diversification of marine animals; however, skeletons did not become permanent, globally important sources of carbonate sediment until the Ordovician radiation. Representative carbonate facies in a Series 3 Cambrian to Tremadocian succession from western Newfoundland and Ordovician successions from the Ibex area, Utah, show ...

There was a major diversification known as the Ordovician Radiation, in the period immediately following the Cambrian. This event is unique in taxonomic, ecologic and biogeographic aspects.While all of the phyla but one were established during the Cambrian explosion, taxonomic increases during the Ordovician were manifest at lower taxonomic levels although ordinal level diversity doubled. Marin...

To geologists, the Ordovician System of Ohio is probably the most famous of the state's Paleozoic rock systems. The alternating shales and limestones of the upper part of this system crop out in southwestern Ohio in the Cincinnati region and yield an incredible abundance and diversity of well-preserved fossils. Representatives of this fauna reside in museums and private collections throughout t...

The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event” (GOBE) was arguably the most important and sustained increase of marine biodiversity in Earth’s history. During a short time span of 25 Ma, an “explosion” of diversity at the order, family, genus, and species level occurred. The combined effects of several geological and biological processes helped generate the GOBE. The peak of the GOBE correlates...

Conodonts representing 38 species of 26 genera have been identified in samples from Upper Ordovician rocks at three central Nevada localities. Ranges of these species and associated graptolites are used graphically to determine correlation of the strata considered with an evolving composite standard that includes information from Ordovician strata at more than 100 localities in North America. R...

The Cambrian Burgess Shale-type biotas form a globally consistent ecosystem, usually dominated by arthropods. Elements of these communities continued into the Early Ordovician at high latitude, but our understanding of ecological changes during the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) is currently limited by the paucity of Ordovician exceptionally preserved open-marine faunas. Here ...

A well-preserved Cambrian section in the Zanskar Valley of northern India has previously been interpreted to record the transition from a passive to an active tectonic margin related to Cambrian–Ordovician orogenesis. This interpretation has been used to support the tectonostratigraphic interpretation of other successions across the Tethyan Himalaya. Our detailed paleoenvironmental analysis sig...