The tectonic
reconstruction of Pangaea (300-200mya) is understood and well
documented, but what happens when we trek back further into deep
time?
Thomas Servais
explained that the paleobiodiversity provinces and hotspots of
Ordovician (450mya) brachiopods have been reconstructed and he can
track the 30 million year, pole to equator spread of the ancient
genus Veryhachium, which is related to modern dinoflagellates and can still be found today. Such
reconstructions give us a glimpse of what life and its dynamics,
which at this time was confined largely to the marine world, would
have looked like. Future work will relate to locating Orovician
biodiversity hotspots and understanding how provinces of the
organisms correlated and evolved.
Thomas frequently referred to the
book “Early Paleozoic Biogeography and Palaeogeography” (eds: D.
A. T. Harper and T. Servais, publisher: Geological Society of London,
2013; http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/m0038) as a good resource which we
can use the past to analyse the functioning of present
biogeographical settings.
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| Veryhachium sp. From the Ordovician to the Present. | (Photo credit: http://fossiilid.info/1440) |
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