Abstract The Silurian rocks of Spain occur in all the zones of the Iberian (or Hesperian) Massif, except the South Portuguese Zone. Silurian rocks also crop out in other parts of the Variscan Belt that were later affected by the Alpine orogeny, in the Pyrenees, the Catalonian Coastal Ranges, the Iberian Cordillera and the Betic Cordilleras (Fig. 5.1 ). As in other regions of the North Gondwanan Province, the Silurian deposits of the Iberian Peninsula comprise mainly terrigenous sediments dominated by pelagic faunas. The most characteristic rocks are graptolitic black shales (the socalled ‘ampelites’) and the commonly mentioned uniformity of the Silurian succession mainly results from the special attention that has been paid to these richly fossiliferous rocks. Other types of rocks also occur in the Silurian sequences, however, and allow distinctions between different types of succession, as well as providing extra evidence for environmental conditions and palaeogeographical setting. We consider that, from Cambrian to Devonian times, with the exception of the South Portuguese Zone that probably belonged to Avalonia ( Oliveira & Quesada 1998 , and references therein), the whole Iberian Peninsula was part of the North Gondwanan Province that extended along the northern margin of the African part of the Gondwana continent ( Robardet et al. 2001 , and references therein). The Silurian palaeolatitude of the Iberian Peninsula cannot be defined precisely, either from climatically sensitive lithofacies or from faunas, as the successions are almost entirely terrigenous and the faunas mainly pelagic. Available palaeomagnetic data are not clearly

Abstract The Devonian was one of the first Palaeozoic periods to be intensively studied in Spain. A few years after the formal definition of the Devonian by A. Sedgwick and R. I. Murchison in Devon, the French naturalists E. de Verneuil and A. d’Archiac (1845) noticed the occurrence of Devonian shelly fossil faunas in Asturias (north Spain). Later on, Prado & Verneuil (1850) enlarged the known Devonian outcrop area to the neighbouring province of Leon, and Prado (1856) extended this to Palencia province. Verneuil & Collomb (1853) , Verneuil & Lorière (1854) and Verneuil & Lartet (1863) demonstrated Devonian rocks in the Iberian Ranges, and both Almera (1891c) and Barrois (1892) were pioneers in the study of Devonian rocks in the Catalonian Coastal Ranges. In southern Spain the seminal work on the system belongs to E. de Verneuil and J. Barrande ( Prado et al. 1855 ), and in the Balearic Islands Hermite (1879) discovered the Devonian succession of Minorca. The history of Devonian research in other Spanish areas is in general much more recent, and was mainly developed in the twentieth century ( Julivert et al. 1983 ). Devonian rocks everywhere in Spain were deposited in marine conditions, although in varied settings ranging from supratidal to subtidal environments. The thickest and most complete Devonian succession in Spain is found in the Cantabrian and WestAsturo-Leonian zones and in the Basque Pyrenees (a–f and w,