Long before the dawn of humans, dinosaurs, insects or even trees, a cascade of unfortunate events threatened to end life on earth. During the Ordovician Period, around 485 to 444 million years ago, ...

A major group of brachiopods are the strophomenids, of which Rafinesquina was one. Characterized by wide flat shells that measure a couple of inches across (large for a brachiopod), millions of ...

Abundance and extinction in Ordovician–Silurian brachiopods, Cincinnati Arch, Ohio and Kentucky. Paleobiology , 2012; 38 (2): 278 DOI: 10.1666/10026.1 Cite This Page : ...

Sponges may be simple creatures, but they basically ruled the world some 445 million years ago, after the Ordovician mass extinction, a new study finds. Roughly 85 percent of all species died in ...

They precisely determined the absolute ages of the Katian–Hirnantian boundary (442.65+0.17/−0.23 Ma) and the Ordovician–Silurian boundary (442.33+0.34/−0.33 Ma), constraining the duration ...

Rich brachiopod fossils dating back 470 million years to the Ordovician period were discovered in Zigui county, Central China’s Hubei Province. Experts suggest these fossils provide evidence for ...

Ordovician reefs were also home to large sea lilies, relatives of sea stars. Anchored to the bottom inside calcareous tubes, they collected food particles with feathery arms that waved in the ...

The "Big Five" mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic Eon have long attracted significant attention from the geoscience community and the public. Among them, the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME ...