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An illustration depicting Cameroceras shells sticking out of the mud as a result of draining seaways during the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction event. The cause of the glaciation is heavily debated. The late Ordovician glaciation was preceded by a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from 7,000 ppm to 4,400 ppm).
The Silurian period has been viewed by some palaeontologists as an extended recovery interval following the Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME), which interrupted the cascading increase in biodiversity that had continuously gone on throughout the Cambrian and most of the Ordovician. [36] The Silurian was the first period to see megafossils ...
Most scientists believe that this climatic oscillation caused the major extinction event that took place during this time. In fact, the Hirnantian (also known as the End Ordovician and the Ordovician-Silurian) mass extinction event represents the second largest such event in geologic history. Approximately 85% of marine (sea-dwelling) species died.
The end of the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event occurred when melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise and eventually stabilize. Biodiversity, with the sustained re-flooding of continental shelves at the onset of the Silurian, rebounded within the surviving orders.
Brachiopods, bryozoans and echinoderms were also heavily affected, and the endocerid cephalopods died out completely, except for possible rare Silurian forms. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction Events may have been caused by an ice age that occurred at the end of the Ordovician period as the end of the Late Ordovician was one of the coldest ...
The Late Ordovician Glaciation coincided with the second largest of the five major extinction events, known as the Late Ordovician mass extinction. This period is the only known glaciation to occur alongside of a mass extinction event. The extinction event consisted of two discrete pulses.
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The Ordovician–Silurian extinction events may have been caused by an ice age that occurred at the end of the Ordovician Period, due to the expansion of the first terrestrial plants, [54] as the end of the Late Ordovician was one of the coldest times in the last 600 million years of Earth's history.