Late Ordovician Mass Extinction: Earth, fire and ice.

Abstract

The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction was the earliest of the ‘big’ five and the earliest to affect the trajectory of metazoan life. Two phases have been identified near the start of the Hirnantian and in the middle. It was a massive taxonomic extinction, a weak phylogenetic extinction and a relatively benign ecological extinction. A rapid cooling triggering a major ice age that reduced the temperature of surface waters, prompted a sea level drop of some 100 m and introduced toxic bottom waters onto the shelves. These symptoms of more fundamental planetary processes have been associated with a range of factors with an underlying driver identified as volcanicity. Volcanic eruptions, and other products, may have extended back in time to at least the Sandbian and early Katian suggesting the extinctions were more protracted and influential than hitherto documented.