Ordovician
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An Ordovician is a Geologic Period within the Paleozoic.
References
2022
- (Wikipedia, 2022) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ordovician Retrieved:2022-12-31.
- The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. The Ordovician, named after the Welsh tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same rock beds in North Wales in the Cambrian and Silurian systems, respectively. [1] Lapworth recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian systems, and placed them in a system of their own. The Ordovician received international approval in 1960 (forty years after Lapworth's death), when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Geological Congress. Life continued to flourish during the Ordovician as it did in the earlier Cambrian Period, although the end of the period was marked by the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events. Invertebrates, namely molluscs and arthropods, dominated the oceans, with members of the latter group probably starting their establishment on land during this time, becoming fully established by the Devonian. The first land plants are known from this period. The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event considerably increased the diversity of life. Fish, the world's first true vertebrates, continued to evolve, and those with jaws may have first appeared late in the period. About 100 times as many meteorites struck the Earth per year during the Ordovician compared with today.
- ↑ Charles Lapworth (1879) "On the Tripartite Classification of the Lower Palaeozoic Rocks," Geological Magazine, new series, 6 : 1-15. From pp. 13-14: "North Wales itself — at all events the whole of the great Bala district where Sedgwick first worked out the physical succession among the rocks of the intermediate or so-called Upper Cambrian or Lower Silurian system; and in all probability, much of the Shelve and the Caradoc area, whence Murchison first published its distinctive fossils — lay within the territory of the Ordovices; … Here, then, have we the hint for the appropriate title for the central system of the Lower Paleozoic. It should be called the Ordovician System, after this old British tribe."