Ordovician Period
- Key People:
- Charles Lapworth
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Ordovician Period, in geologic time, the second period of the Paleozoic Era. It began 485.4 million years ago, following the Cambrian Period, and ended 443.8 million years ago, when the Silurian Period began. Ordovician rocks have the distinction of occurring at the highest elevation on Earth—the top of Mount Everest.
The Ordovician Period ushered in significant changes in plate tectonics, climate, and biological systems. Rapid seafloor spreading at oceanic ridges fostered some of the highest global sea levels in the Phanerozoic Eon. As a result, continents were flooded to an unprecedented level, with North America almost entirely underwater at times. These seas deposited widespread blankets of sediment that preserved the extraordinarily abundant fossil remains of marine animals. Numerical models of the Ordovician atmosphere estimate that levels of carbon dioxide were several times higher than today. This would have created warm climates from the Equator to the poles; however, extensive glaciation did occur for a brief time over much of the Southern Hemisphere at the end of the period.
The Ordovician Period was also characterized by the intense diversification (an increase in the number of species) of marine animal life in what became known as the Ordovician radiation. This event precipitated the appearance of almost every modern phylum (a group of organisms having the same body plan) of marine invertebrate by the end of the period, as well as the rise of fish. Ordovician seas were filled with a diverse assemblage of invertebrates, dominated by brachiopods (lamp shells), bryozoans (moss animals), trilobites, mollusks, echinoderms (a group of spiny-skinned marine invertebrates), and graptolites (small, colonial, planktonic animals). On land the first plants appeared, as well as possibly the first invasion of terrestrial arthropods. The end of the Ordovician was heralded by a mass extinction, the second largest in Earth’s history. (The largest mass extinction took place at the end of the Permian Period and resulted in the loss of about 90 percent of existing species; see also Permian extinction.)
The Ordovician was demarcated in the late 19th century as a compromise in a dispute over the boundaries of the Cambrian and Silurian systems. Studying the rock succession from northwest to southeast within Wales, English geologist Adam Sedgwick named the Cambrian System in 1835. At the same time and working in the opposite direction, Scottish geologist Roderick Murchison named the Silurian System. Both geologists expanded their systems until they overlapped, triggering a scientific feud. English geologist Charles Lapworth proposed the Ordovician System (named for an ancient Celtic tribe of northern Wales called the Ordovices) in 1879 to define the disputed overlapping interval. Lapworth’s proposal was resisted in Britain into the 1890s and, despite subsequent widespread international usage, was not officially adopted there until 1960.
The Ordovician is divided into three epochs: Early Ordovician (485.4 million to 470 million years ago), Middle Ordovician (470 million to 458.4 million years ago), and Late Ordovician (458.4 million to 443.8 million years ago).
The Ordovician environment
Paleogeography
During the Ordovician Period, four major continents were present and separated by three major oceans. Although the positions of these continents are frequently updated with new evidence, current understanding of their position is based on paleomagnetic evidence, fossil markers, and climatically sensitive sediments, such as evaporite minerals. The craton (stable interior portion of a continent) of Laurentia—made up of most of present-day North America, Greenland, and part of Scotland—straddled the Equator and was rotated approximately 45° clockwise from its present orientation. The craton made up of Siberian and Kazakhstania (which is also called Siberia-Kazakhstan) lay east of Laurentia, along and slightly north of the Equator. The Iapetus Ocean separated these two landmasses on the south from the Baltica craton, which included present-day Scandinavia and north-central Europe. The microcontinent of Avalonia—made up of England, New England, and maritime Canada—was positioned to the west of Baltica and also faced Laurentia across the Iapetus Ocean. The Paleotethys Sea separated Avalonia, Baltica, and Kazakhstan from the supercontinent of Gondwana, which consisted of Africa, South America, India, Arabia, China, Australia, Antarctica, Western Europe, the southeastern United States, and the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. This immense supercontinent straddled both the South Pole, located then in what is now northwest Africa, and the Equator, which then crossed present-day Australia and Antarctica. In this position, Africa and South America were rotated nearly 180° from their present orientation. A single body of water, the Panthalassic Ocean, covered almost the entire Northern Hemisphere and was as wide at the Equator as the modern Pacific Ocean.