Silurian

For other uses, see Silurian (disambiguation).
Silurian Period
443.8–419.2 million years ago

Mean atmospheric O
2 content over period duration		 c. 14 vol %[1]
(70 % of modern level)
Mean atmospheric CO
2 content over period duration		 c. 4500 ppm[2]
(16 times pre-industrial level)
Mean surface temperature over period duration c. 17 °C[3]
(3 °C above modern level)
Sea level (above present day) Around 180m, with short-term negative excursions[4]

The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, at 443.8 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, 419.2 Mya.[5] As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the exact dates are uncertain by several million years. The base of the Silurian is set at a major extinction event when 60% of marine species were wiped out. See Ordovician-Silurian extinction events.

A significant evolutionary milestone during the Silurian was the diversification of jawed and bony fish. Life also began to appear on land in the form of small, moss-like, vascular plants that grew beside lakes, streams, and coastlines, and also in the form of small terrestrial arthropods. However, terrestrial life would not greatly diversify and affect the landscape until the Devonian.

History of study

The Silurian system was first identified by British geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, who was examining fossil-bearing sedimentary rock strata in south Wales in the early 1830s. He named the sequences for a Celtic tribe of Wales, the Silures, inspired by his friend Adam Sedgwick, who had named the period of his study the Cambrian,from the Latin name for Wales. This naming does not indicate any correlation between the occurrence of the Silurian rocks and the land inhabited by the Silures; cf. Geology of Wales, Tribes of Wales. In 1835 the two men presented a joint paper, under the title On the Silurian and Cambrian Systems, Exhibiting the Order in which the Older Sedimentary Strata Succeed each other in England and Wales, which was the germ of the modern geological time scale. As it was first identified, the "Silurian" series when traced farther afield quickly came to overlap Sedgwick's "Cambrian" sequence, however, provoking furious disagreements that ended the friendship. Charles Lapworth resolved the conflict by defining a new Ordovician system including the contested beds. An early alternative name for the Silurian was "Gotlandian" after the strata of the Baltic island of Gotland.

The French geologist Joachim Barrande, building on Murchison's work, used the term Silurian in a more comprehensive sense than was justified by subsequent knowledge. He divided the Silurian rocks of Bohemia into eight stages. His interpretation was questioned in 1854 by Edward Forbes, and the later stages of Barrande, F, G and H, have since been shown to be Devonian. Despite these modifications in the original groupings of the strata, it is recognized that Barrande established Bohemia as a classic ground for the study of the earliest fossils.

Subdivisions

Key events in the Silurian
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Key events of the Silurian Period.
Axis scale: millions of years ago.

Llandovery

The Llandovery Epoch lasted from 443.8 ± 1.5 to 433.4 ± 2.8 mya, and is subdivided into three stages: the Rhuddanian,[8] lasting until 440.8 million years ago, the Aeronian, lasting to 438.5 million years ago, and the Telychian. The epoch is named for the town of Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, Wales.

Wenlock

The Wenlock, which lasted from 433.4 ± 1.5 to 427.4 ± 2.8 mya, is subdivided into the Sheinwoodian (to 430.5 million years ago) and Homerian ages. It is named after Wenlock Edge in Shropshire, England. During the Wenlock, the oldest known tracheophytes of the genus Cooksonia, appear. The complexity of slightly younger Gondwana plants like Baragwanathia indicates a much longer history for vascular plants, perhaps extending into the early Silurian or even Ordovician. See Evolutionary history of plants. The first terrestrial animals also appear in the Wenlock, represented by air-breathing millipedes from Scotland.[9]

Ludlow

See also: Ludlow Group

The Ludlow, lasting from 427.4 ± 1.5 to 423 ± 2.8 mya, comprises the Gorstian stage, lasting until 425.6 million years ago, and the Ludfordian stage. It is named for the town of Ludlow (and neighbouring Ludford) in Shropshire, England.

Přídolí

The Pridoli, lasting from 423 ± 1.5 to 419.2 ± 2.8 mya, is the final and shortest epoch of the Silurian. It is named after one locality at the Homolka a Přídolí nature reserve near the Prague suburb Slivenec in the Czech Republic. Přídolí is the old name of a cadastral field area.[10]

Regional stages

In North America a different suite of regional stages is sometimes used:

Geography

Ordovician-Silurian boundary on Hovedøya, Norway, showing gray Ordovician sandstone and brown Silurian mudstone. The layers have been overturned by the Caledonian orogeny.

With the supercontinent Gondwana covering the equator and much of the southern hemisphere, a large ocean occupied most of the northern half of the globe.[11] The high sea levels of the Silurian and the relatively flat land (with few significant mountain belts) resulted in a number of island chains, and thus a rich diversity of environmental settings.[11]

During the Silurian, Gondwana continued a slow southward drift to high southern latitudes, but there is evidence that the Silurian icecaps were less extensive than those of the late Ordovician glaciation. The southern continents remained united during this period. The melting of icecaps and glaciers contributed to a rise in sea level, recognizable from the fact that Silurian sediments overlie eroded Ordovician sediments, forming an unconformity. The continents of Avalonia, Baltica, and Laurentia drifted together near the equator, starting the formation of a second supercontinent known as Euramerica.

When the proto-Europe collided with North America, the collision folded coastal sediments that had been accumulating since the Cambrian off the east coast of North America and the west coast of Europe. This event is the Caledonian orogeny, a spate of mountain building that stretched from New York State through conjoined Europe and Greenland to Norway. At the end of the Silurian, sea levels dropped again, leaving telltale basins of evaporites in a basin extending from Michigan to West Virginia, and the new mountain ranges were rapidly eroded. The Teays River, flowing into the shallow mid-continental sea, eroded Ordovician strata, leaving traces in the Silurian strata of northern Ohio and Indiana.

The vast ocean of Panthalassa covered most of the northern hemisphere. Other minor oceans include two phases of the Tethys— the Proto-Tethys and Paleo-Tethys— the Rheic Ocean, a seaway of the Iapetus Ocean (now in between Avalonia and Laurentia), and the newly formed Ural Ocean.

Climate and sea level

Extinction intensity.svg Cambrian Ordovician Silurian Devonian Carboniferous Permian Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous Paleogene Neogene
Marine extinction intensity during the Phanerozoic
%
Millions of years ago
Extinction intensity.svg Cambrian Ordovician Silurian Devonian Carboniferous Permian Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous Paleogene Neogene
The blue graph shows the apparent percentage (not the absolute number) of marine animal genera becoming extinct during any given time interval. It does not represent all marine species, just those that are readily fossilized. The labels of the "Big Five" extinction events are clickable hyperlinks; see Extinction event for more details. (source and image info)

The Silurian period enjoyed relatively stable and warm temperatures, in contrast with the extreme glaciations of the Ordovician before it, and the extreme heat of the ensuing Devonian.[11] Sea levels rose from their Hirnantian low throughout the first half of the Silurian; they subsequently fell throughout the rest of the period, although smaller scale patterns are superimposed on this general trend; fifteen high-stands can be identified, and the highest Silurian sea level was probably around 140 m higher than the lowest level reached.[11]

During this period, the Earth entered a long, warm greenhouse phase, and warm shallow seas covered much of the equatorial land masses. Early in the Silurian, glaciers retreated back into the South Pole until they almost disappeared in the middle of Silurian. The period witnessed a relative stabilization of the Earth's general climate, ending the previous pattern of erratic climatic fluctuations. Layers of broken shells (called coquina) provide strong evidence of a climate dominated by violent storms generated then as now by warm sea surfaces. Later in the Silurian, the climate cooled slightly, but in the Silurian-Devonian boundary, the climate became warmer.

Perturbations

The climate and carbon cycle appears to be rather unsettled during the Silurian, which has a higher concentration of isotopic excursions than any other period.[11] The Ireviken event, Mulde event and Lau event each represent isotopic excursions following a minor mass extinction[12] and associated with rapid sea-level change, in addition to the larger extinction at the end of the Silurian.[11] Each one leaves a similar signature in the geological record, both geochemically and biologically; pelagic (free-swimming) organisms were particularly hard hit, as were brachiopods, corals and trilobites, and extinctions rarely occur in a rapid series of fast bursts.[11]

Flora and fauna

Cooksonia, the earliest vascular plant, middle Silurian
Silurian sea bed fossils collected from Wren's Nest Nature Reserve, Dudley UK
Crinoid fragments in a Silurian (Pridoli) limestone (Saaremaa, Estonia)
Silurian sea bed fossils collected from Wren's Nest Nature Reserve, Dudley UK
Artist's impression of Silurian underwater fauna

The Silurian was the first period to see megafossils of extensive terrestrial biota, in the form of moss-like miniature forests along lakes and streams. However, the land fauna did not have a major impact on the Earth until it diversified in the Devonian.[11]

The first fossil records of vascular plants, that is, land plants with tissues that carry water and food, appeared in the second half of the Silurian period.[13] The earliest known representatives of this group are Cooksonia (mostly from the northern hemisphere) and Baragwanathia (from Australia). Most of the sediments containing Cooksonia are marine in nature. Preferred habitats were likely along rivers and streams. Baragwanathia, appears to be almost as old dating to the Early Ludlow (420 million years) and has branching stems and needle-like leaves of 10–20 cm. The plant shows a high degree of development in relation to its age. Fossils of this plant are only found in Australia.[14] Eohostimella heathana is an early, probably terrestrial, "plant" known from compression fossils[15] of early Silurian (Llandovery) age.[16] The chemistry of its fossils is similar to that of fossilised vascular plants, rather than algae.[15]

Eurypterus, a common Upper Silurian eurypterid

The first bony fish, the Osteichthyes, appeared, represented by the Acanthodians covered with bony scales; fish reached considerable diversity and developed movable jaws, adapted from the supports of the front two or three gill arches. A diverse fauna of Eurypterids (sea scorpions)—some of them several meters in length—prowled the shallow Silurian seas of North America; many of their fossils have been found in New York state. Leeches also made their appearance during the Silurian Period. Brachiopods, bryozoa, molluscs, hederelloids, tentaculitoids, crinoids and trilobites were abundant and diverse. Endobiotic symbionts were common in the corals and stromatoporoids.[17][18]

Reef abundance was patchy; sometimes fossils are frequent but at other points are virtually absent from the rock record.[11]

The earliest known terrestrial animals appear during the Mid Silurian, including the millipede Pneumodesmus.[9] Some evidence also suggests the presence of predatory trigonotarbid arachnoids and myriapods in Late Silurian facies.[19] Predatory invertebrates would indicate that simple food webs were in place that included non-predatory prey animals. Extrapolating back from Early Devonian biota, Andrew Jeram et al. in 1990[20] suggested a food web based on as yet undiscovered detritivores and grazers on micro-organisms.[21]

Notes

  1. ↑ Image:Sauerstoffgehalt-1000mj.svg
  2. ↑ Image:Phanerozoic Carbon Dioxide.png
  3. ↑ Image:All palaeotemps.png
  4. ↑ Haq, B. U.; Schutter, SR (2008). "A Chronology of Paleozoic Sea-Level Changes". Science 322 (5898): 64–68. Bibcode:2008Sci...322...64H. doi:10.1126/science.1161648. PMID 18832639.
  5. ↑ "International Chronostratigraphic Chart v.2015/01" (PDF). International Commission on Stratigraphy. January 2015.
  6. ↑ Jeppsson, L.; Calner, M. (2007). "The Silurian Mulde Event and a scenario for secundo—secundo events". Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 93 (02): 135–154. doi:10.1017/S0263593300000377.
  7. ↑ Munnecke, A.; Samtleben, C.; Bickert, T. (2003). "The Ireviken Event in the lower Silurian of Gotland, Sweden-relation to similar Palaeozoic and Proterozoic events". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 195 (1): 99–124. doi:10.1016/S0031-0182(03)00304-3.
  8. ↑ Named for the Cefn-Rhuddan Farm in the Llandovery area.
  9. 1 2 Paul Selden & Helen Read (2008). "The oldest land animals: Silurian millipedes from Scotland" (PDF). Bulletin of the British Myriapod & Isopod Group 23: 36–37.
  10. ↑ Manda, Štěpán; Frýda, Jiří (2010). "Silurian-Devonian boundary events and their influence on cephalopod evolution: evolutionary significance of cephalopod egg size during mass extinctions". Bulletin of Geoscience 85 (3): 513–40. doi:10.3140/bull.geosci.1174.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Munnecke, Axel; Calner, Mikael; Harper, David A.T.; Servais, Thomas (2010). "Ordovician and Silurian sea–water chemistry, sea level, and climate: A synopsis". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 296 (3–4): 389–413. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.08.001.
  12. ↑ Samtleben, C.; Munnecke, A.; Bickert, T. (2000). "Development of facies and C/O-isotopes in transects through the Ludlow of Gotland: Evidence for global and local influences on a shallow-marine environment". Facies 43: 1. doi:10.1007/BF02536983.
  13. ↑ Rittner, Don (2009). Encyclopedia of Biology. Infobase Publishing. p. 338.
  14. ↑ Bora, Lily (2010). Principles of Paleobotany. Mittal Publications. pp. 36–37.
  15. 1 2 Niklas, Karl J. (1976). "Chemical Examinations of Some Non-Vascular Paleozoic Plants". Brittonia (New York Botanical Garden Press) 28 (1): 113. doi:10.2307/2805564. JSTOR 2805564.
  16. ↑ Edwards, D. & Wellman, C. (2001), "Embryophytes on Land: The Ordovician to Lochkovian (Lower Devonian) Record", in Gensel, P. & Edwards, D., Plants Invade the Land : Evolutionary and Environmental Perspectives, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 3–28, ISBN 978-0-231-11161-4, p. 4
  17. ↑ Vinn, O.; wilson, M.A.; Mõtus, M.-A. (2014). "Symbiotic endobiont biofacies in the Silurian of Baltica". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 404: 24–29. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2014.03.041. Retrieved 2014-06-11.
  18. ↑ Vinn, O.; Mõtus, M.-A. (2008). "The earliest endosymbiotic mineralized tubeworms from the Silurian of Podolia, Ukraine". Journal of Paleontology 82: 409–414. doi:10.1666/07-056.1. Retrieved 2014-06-11.
  19. ↑ Garwood, Russell J.; Edgecombe, Gregory D. (September 2011). "Early Terrestrial Animals, Evolution, and Uncertainty". Evolution: Education and Outreach (New York: Springer Science+Business Media) 4 (3): 489–501. doi:10.1007/s12052-011-0357-y. ISSN 1936-6426. Retrieved 2015-07-21.
  20. ↑ Jeram, Andrew J.; Selden, Paul A.; Edwards, Dianne (1990). "Land Animals in the Silurian: Arachnids and Myriapods from Shropshire, England". Science 250 (4981): 658–61. Bibcode:1990Sci...250..658J. doi:10.1126/science.250.4981.658. PMID 17810866.
  21. ↑ DiMichele, William A; Hook, Robert W (1992). "The Silurian". In Behrensmeyer, Anna K. Terrestrial Ecosystems Through Time: Evolutionary Paleoecology of Terrestrial Plants and Animals. pp. 207–10. ISBN 978-0-226-04155-1.

References

External links

Wikisource has original works on the topic: Paleozoic#Silurian
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Preceded by Proterozoic Eon Phanerozoic Eon
Paleozoic Era Mesozoic Era Cenozoic Era
Cambrian Ordovician Silurian Devonian Carboniferous Permian Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous Paleogene Neogene 4ry
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