Leaders :
T. Servais (Lille, France), A. Munnecke (Erlangen, Germany), D.A.T. Harper (Copenhagen, Denmark),
Jun Li (Nanjing, China), A.W. Owen (Glasgow, UK), P.M. Sheehan (Milwaukee, USA)
Arguably the most sustained rise in
marine biodiversity
took place during the Ordovician, and the second largest mass
extinction
event took place close to the end of that Period, coincident with an
episode
of major climate fluctuation. The results of the very successful IGCP
project
n° 410 "The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event" not only
included
the development of an improved globally-integrated biozonation for
graptolites,
conodonts and chitinozoans, but also generated biodiversity curves that
have been constructed for all Ordovician fossil groups.
Following the work of the numerous regional teams and of the clade teams, that were established for each fossil group in IGCP project n° 410, we propose a new successor project in order to develop a better understanding of the environmental changes that influenced the biodiversity trends in the Ordovician and Early Silurian. In our project, the major objective is thus to attempt to find the possible physical and/or chemical causes (e.g., related to changes in climate, sea level, volcanism, plate movements, extraterrestrial influences, etc.) of the Ordovician biodiversification, the end-Ordovician extinction, and the Silurian radiation. Work on understanding the patterns of
biodiversity
change at a range of taxonomic, spatial and temporal scales will
continue
through the duration of the project but our objectives in terms of
understanding
the environmental parameters within which these changes took place will
be addressed in successive step over the five years 2004-2008:
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