A new assemblage of arthropod cuticles from Upper Silurian rocks in Shropshire, England, includes at least two centipedes and a trigonotarbid arachnid. This unequivocal terrestrial fauna from the Silurian constitutes the earliest direct record of land animals. The presence of predatory arthropods suggests that complex terrestrial ecosystems were in place by the late Silurian (414 x 10(6) years ...

Carbon isotope (N13C) analyses of marine carbonates spanning the Silurian^Devonian transition are compared from three richly fossiliferous, well-dated sequences in North America. The three sections, in the central Appalachian Mountains (West Virginia), Great Basin (Nevada), and the southern Mid-continent (Oklahoma), reveal positive N13C shifts beginning in the late Pridoli and reaching peak val...

SPARQL federated queries can be affected by both characteristics of the query and datasets in the federation. We present SILURIAN a Sparql visualizer for understanding queries and federations. SILURIAN visualizes SPARQL queries and, thus, it allows the analysis and understanding of a query complexity with respect to relevant endpoints and shapes of the possible plans.

An apparent absence of Silurian fishes more than half-a-metre in length has been viewed as evidence that gnathostomes were restricted in size and diversity prior to the Devonian. Here we describe the largest pre-Devonian vertebrate (Megamastax amblyodus gen. et sp. nov.), a predatory marine osteichthyan from the Silurian Kuanti Formation (late Ludlow, ~423 million years ago) of Yunnan, China, w...

The aim of this study is to analyze the assemblage of trilobites in the Silurian sequences of Iran by exploring stratigraphic section of the Silurian Niur Formation (Asadli section).  Based on comprehensive field studies and laboratory investigations three Trilobite genera were identified in the study area including Calymene blumenbachii, Gravicalymene convolva, Dalmanites brevigladiolus </...

Palaeomagnetic data are presented from early Silurian (Upper Llandovery) lavas from the Tortworth Silurian inlier of south-west England. Two magnetization components are recognized on the basis of contrasting demagnetization characteristics. A lower unblocking-temperature component (<350 "C) is oriented parallel to the Earth's present magnetic field at the sampling site (N = 46, declination = 3...

Citation: Hughes NC, Hong PS, Hou JB and Fusco G (2017) The Development of the Silurian Trilobite Aulacopleura koninckii Reconstructed by Applying Inferred Growth and Segmentation Dynamics: A Case Study in Paleo-Evo-Devo. Front. Ecol. Evol. 5:37. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2017.00037 The Development of the Silurian Trilobite Aulacopleura koninckii Reconstructed by Applying Inferred Growth and Segmentati...

Glacial episodes have been linked to Ordovician-Silurian extinction events, but cooling itself may not be solely responsible for these extinctions. Teratological (malformed) assemblages of fossil plankton that correlate precisely with the extinction events can help identify alternate drivers of extinction. Here we show that metal poisoning may have caused these aberrant morphologies during a la...

Dispersed microfossils (spores and phytodebris) provide the earliest evidence for land plants. They are first reported from the Llanvirn (Mid-Ordovician). More or less identical assemblages occur from the Llanvirn (Mid-Ordovician) to the late Llandovery (Early Silurian), suggesting a period of relative stasis some 40 Myr in duration. Various lines of evidence suggest that these early dispersed ...

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...