Life at the start of the Ordovician remained confined to the seas ... Ordovician reefs were also home to large sea lilies, relatives of sea stars. Anchored to the bottom inside calcareous tubes ...

I f astronomers had been walking the Earth 466 million years ago, they may have had something special to see. The moon and ...

This sea teemed with marine life, its abundance and diversity rivaling modern-day sea life. However, in the Ordovician, the creatures were invertebrates, or organisms lacking a backbone, such as ...

Although these new life-forms spread worldwide ... Like more familiar echinoderms such as sea stars and sea urchins, the Ordovician sea lily fossil and modern basket star shown here have a ...

The Earth: a ringed planet, much like Saturn, surrounded by a hula hoop of asteroids. The summit of Mount Everest: a tropical ...

This era of intense bombardment, known as the Ordovician impact spike, may have resulted from meteorites falling from the ring rather than flying in from space, which would explain the strange ...

The world and its ecosystems have been around for a long time — so long that the first mass extinction occurred “just shy” of ...

Learn how the rocks formed, take a look at the life in the ocean that covered this area ... were formed about 450 million years ago during the Late Ordovician Period, when a warm shallow sea covered ...

In the past 500 million years on Earth, there have been five mass extinctions. Here are a few incredible species that managed ...

Land-Sea 'Tag-Team' Devastated Ocean Life Millions of Years Ago Reveal Scientists Aug. 29, 2024 — A 'tag-team' between the oceans and continents millions of years ago devastated marine life and ...

Let’s start with a clear definition of what constitutes a mass extinction. Unlike regular extinctions, which occur at a steady background rate — about 10% of species lost every million years — mass ...

The startup made a big splash, then ran aground this summer. Its story has a lot to teach us about trying to geoengineer our ...