Ordovician

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Ordovician

The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.2 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period 485.4 million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period 443.8 Mya.[1]

Life and climate[edit | edit source]

During the Ordovician, the southern continents were collected into Gondwana. Gondwana started the period in equatorial latitudes and, as the period progressed, drifted toward the South Pole. Early in the Ordovician, small plants, fungi, and simple multicellular animals began to colonize the land, but invertebrates, fish, and marine algae dominated the world's ecosystems.

Ordovician–Silurian extinction events[edit | edit source]

The Ordovician came to a close in a series of extinction events that, taken together, comprise the second largest of the five major extinction events in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that went extinct.

See also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

External links[edit | edit source]

Ordovician Resources
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Contributors: Prab R. Tumpati, MD