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What animals were alive during the Ordovician period?

What animals were alive during the Ordovician period?

The Ordovician is best known for its diverse marine invertebrates, including graptolites, trilobites, brachiopods, and the conodonts (early vertebrates). A typical marine community consisted of these animals, plus red and green algae, primitive fish, cephalopods, corals, crinoids, and gastropods.

What fossils were found in the Ordovician period?

Common Ordovician fossils found in Kentucky include sponges (Porifera), corals (Cnidaria), bryozoans, brachiopods, trilobites, snails (gastropods), clams (pelecypods), squid-like animals (cephalopods), crinoids (Echinodermata), and microscopic animals like ostracodes and conodonts.

What organism first appeared during the Ordovician period?

New Species The sea teemed with life different from its Cambrian predecessors such as bivalves, gastropods (snails), bryozoans (moss animals), and crinoids (sea lilies). Bryozoans first appeared in the Ordovician and comprise an important group of colonial, marine organisms that still exist today.

What are Ordovician rocks?

Ordovician” refers to a time period within the Paleozoic era, during which the Ordovician formation was created. The Ordovician formation is a very large layer of uniquely formed limestone, which possesses a much stronger, less absorbent, and less soluble structure, compared to other sources of limestone.

What Eon was the Ordovician period?

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.

What started the Ordovician period?

485.4 (+/- 1.9) million years ago
Ordovician/Began

What Eon is the Ordovician period?

What caused the Ordovician period?

The more likely cause is that the Earth cooled, particularly the oceans where most of the organisms lived during the Ordovician (Remember there were no land plants and no evidence of land organisms yet). All the extinctions occurred in the oceans. The greatest extinctions occurred in the tropical oceans.

When was the Ordovician period?

485.4 (+/- 1.9) million years ago – 443.8 (+/- 1.5) million years ago
Ordovician/Occurred

What were the 5 mass extinctions on Earth?

Top Five Extinctions

  • Ordovician-silurian Extinction: 440 million years ago.
  • Devonian Extinction: 365 million years ago.
  • Permian-triassic Extinction: 250 million years ago.
  • Triassic-jurassic Extinction: 210 million years ago.
  • Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction: 65 Million Years Ago.

What kind of organisms lived in the Ordovician period?

Popular examples of such organisms that existed around 400 – 500 million years ago are the Discitoceras, Rayonnoceras, Endoceras, Cameroceras, etc. They were dominantly present throughout the entire Ordovician and are often used as index fossils for the middle Paleozoic Period.

How is the Ordovician Period divided into epochs?

Comprising the second time span of the Paleozoic Era, the Ordovician Period is divided into three epochs: Lower, Middle, and Upper. The first epoch is further divided into the stages named Tremadocian and Floian, whereas the second epoch comprises the stages of Dapingian and Darriwilian.

What was the result of the Ordovician extinction?

The extinction that occurred at the end of the Ordovician Period devastated marine communities. This extinction is the first major extinction event recorded in the rock record.

How did plants evolve during the Ordovician ice ages?

The leaves are attached to thin stems. They evolved so extensively during the Ordovician that according to latest research, it is suggested that their CO2 absorbing ability might have contributed to the occurrence of Ordovician Ice Ages.