Marine organisms have occupied hard substrates since the Archaean. Shells, rocks, wood
and sedimentary hardgrounds offer relatively stable habitats compared to unconsolidated …

Abstract The Ordovician Period records an extraordinary biodiversity increase known as the
Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), which coincided with a series of …

Molluscs comprise the second largest phylum of animals (after arthropods), occurring in
virtually all habitats. Some are commercially important, a few are pests and some carry …

The trace fossil Thalassinoides, a common constituent of the Zoophycos and Glossifungites
ichnofacies, is abundant in post-Paleozoic rocks. Modern Thalassinoides-like burrows are …

In the Silurian carbonate platform succession of Gotland, Sweden, interreef limestone and
marl sequences have shallow-marine shelly assemblages dominated by brachiopods …

Within carbonate sediments below tropical–subtropical oceanic surface waters,
syndepositional “chemical” dissolution of CaCO3 driven by organic matter oxidation can …

Paleoecological changes associated with Phanerozoic mass extinctions and radiations can
be categorized into four nonhierarchical, nonadditive levels. First-level changes include …

The Ordovician was a time of extensive and pervasive low‐magnesium calcite (LMC)
precipitation on shallow marine sea floors. The evidence comes from field study (extensive …

Modern marine plankton communities include a broad diversity of metazoans that are
suspension-feeding or micropredatory as adults. Many benthic marine species have larval …

The encrusting tentaculitoid tubeworms (Middle Ordovician to Middle Jurassic) have their
acme of diversity in the Middle Paleozoic and they form a part of the Paleozoic evolutionary …