Ordovician-Silurian extinction, global event that eliminated some 85 percent of all Ordovician species. It was driven by climate and habitat disruptions caused by the onset of glaciation in Gondwana, the associated fall in sea level, and a subsequent warming period which melted ice and brought about rising sea levels.

Dec 24, 2024 · 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 extinction at the end of the Ordovician Period is the oldest of the "Big Five." Animals had not yet conquered land at this time so the extinction was confined to life in the seas.

The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction was the earliest of the ‘big’ five extinction events and the earliest to affect the trajectory of metazoan life. Two phases have been identified near the start of the Hirnantian period and in the middle.

Sep 12, 2022 · During the Ordovician Period, around 485 to 444 million years ago, the diversity of marine life exploded. Trilobites and mollusks crawled on the ocean floor, plankton-like filter-feeders floated at all depths and coral and algae bloomed.

In less than a million years Dinogorgon vanished in the greatest mass extinction ever, along with about nine of every ten plant and animal species on the planet.

Nov 2, 2021 · Nearly 500 million years ago in the late Ordovician period, a mass extinction wiped out 85% of marine species. Scientists have now used modelling to narrow down the cause of this colossal loss...

The Ordovician–Silurian transition experienced severe, but enigmatic, glaciation, as well as a paradoxical combination of mass extinction and species origination. Here we report a large and fast true polar wander (TPW) event that occurred 450–440 ...

Nov 30, 2018 · However, this interval of extinction had low ecological selectivity, which means that overall community structure experienced little change. A new study delves deeper into the effects of the Late Ordovician event by focusing on the phylogenetic relationships between strophomenoid brachiopods.

Jan 16, 2021 · In the sequence of geologic time, the Ordivician follows the Cambrian Period, well-known for the evolutionary "explosion" of the same name that populated the world with nearly all the modern animal phyla — the major branches we now see in the tree of life.