All articles tagged with #ordovician
New fossil and geological evidence place the shark lineage around 450 million years ago in the Middle Ordovician, predating the first broad leaves and forests on land, showing that modern sharks are the result of a long marine evolution rather than unchanged fossils, with land plants and forests arising much later in Earth’s history.
An amateur fossil hunter near Covington, Kentucky, unearthed a nearly seven-foot-long fossil dating to about 450 million years ago, nicknamed 'Godzillus.' The discovery in the Kope Formation near Cincinnati is unlike any known local specimen, puzzling scientists who have found trilobites on its underside. Researchers from the University of Cincinnati and Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne are studying its biology, surroundings, and burial to determine what it was and how it formed.
Researchers have discovered a 480-million-year-old fossil in Morocco that provides evidence of an ancient interspecies interaction. The fossil is a cephalopod that was posthumously colonized by a colony of tiny filter-feeders called pterobranchs. This discovery sheds light on the early Paleozoic era and the transitionary period between the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. It also highlights the long history of animals building their homes on top of other animals, a behavior that has persisted for millions of years.