Stratigraphic distribution, ecology, and functional morphology, phylogeny, and systematic paleontology of 86 species of Ordovician summetrical univalved mollusks from the midcontinent.

Stratigraphic distribution, paleoecology, biogeography, and systematic paleontology of 50 species of Ordovician nautiloids from the midcontinent.

A “superbly written, richly illustrated” guide to the animals who lived 450 million years ago—in the fossil-rich area where Cincinnati, Ohio now stands (Rocks & Minerals). The region around Cincinnati, Ohio, is known throughout the world for the abundant and beautiful fossils found in limestones and shales that were deposited as sediments on the sea floor during the Ordovician Period, about 450 million years ago—some 250 million years before the dinosaurs lived. In Ordovician time, the shallow sea that covered much of what is now the North American continent teemed with marine life. The Cincinnati area has yielded some of the world’s most abundant and best-preserved fossils of invertebrate animals such as trilobites, bryozoans, brachiopods, molluscs, echinoderms, and graptolites. So famous are the Ordovician fossils and rocks of the Cincinnati region that geologists use the term “Cincinnatian” for strata of the same age all over North America. This book synthesizes more than 150 years of research on this fossil treasure-trove, describing and illustrating the fossils, the life habits of the animals represented, their communities, and living relatives, as well as the nature of the rock strata in which they are found and the environmental conditions of the ancient sea. “A fascinating glimpse of a long-extinct ecosystem.” —Choice

Special Publication 485 About 40 million years after the Cambrian Explosion, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) represents a second and dramatic burst in marine biodiversity, with major changes in the structure of ecosystems and the progressive replacement of the distinctive Cambrian Evolutionary Fauna by the Paleozoic Evolutionary Fauna. However, the GOBE is not a single, worldwide, short-term event, but rather the complex sum of successive diversifications occurring in distinct taxonomic groups, trophic guilds and regions. This book focuses on the Late Ordovician Tafilalt Biota, Anti-Atlas Morocco, which provides a snapshot of the GOBE in high-latitude regions of the Southern Hemisphere. A series of contributions explore different aspects of the Tafilalt Biota, including its geological setting, the international fossil trade in this area and a series of detailed systematic contributions describing many new taxa of marine invertebrates. This volume represents a significant contribution to the understanding of the Tafilalt Biota and its significance to the GOBE.

Two of the greatest evolutionary events in the history of life on Earth occurred during Early Paleozoic time. The first was the Cambrian explosion of skeletonized marine animals about 540 million years ago. The second was the "Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event," which is the focus of this book. During the 46-million-year Ordovician Period (489–443 m.y.), a bewildering array of adaptive radiations of "Paleozoic- and Modern-type" biotas appeared in marine habitats, the first animals (arthropods) walked on land, and the first non-vascular bryophyte-like plants (based on their cryptospore record) colonized terrestrial areas with damp environments. This book represents a compilation by a large team of Ordovician specialists from around the world, who have enthusiastically cooperated to produce this first globally orientated, internationally sponsored IGCP (International Geological Correlation Program) project on Ordovician biotas. The major part is an assembly of genus- and species-level diversity data for the many Ordovician fossil groups. The book also presents an evaluation of how each group diversified through Ordovician time, with assessments of patterns of change and rates of origination and extinction. As such, it will become the standard work and data source for biotic studies on the Ordovician Period.