The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event: Insights from the Tafilalt Biota, Morocco

About 40 million years after the Cambrian Explosion, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) represents a second and dramatic burst in marine biodiversity, with major changes in the structure of ecosystems and the progressive replacement of the distinctive Cambrian Evolutionary Fauna by the Paleozoic Evolutionary Fauna. However, the GOBE is not a single, worldwide, short-term event, but rather the complex sum of successive diversifications occurring in distinct taxonomic groups, trophic guilds and regions. This book focuses on the Late Ordovician Tafilalt Biota, Anti-Atlas Morocco, which provides a snapshot of the GOBE in high-latitude regions of the Southern Hemisphere. A series of contributions explore different aspects of the Tafilalt Biota, including its geological setting, the international fossil trade in this area and a series of detailed systematic contributions describing many new taxa of marine invertebrates. This volume represents a significant contribution to the understanding of the Tafilalt Biota and its significance to the GOBE.
The first report of coronates (echinodermata) from Africa
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Published:May 24, 2022
Abstract
Coronates are widely distributed in Ordovician and Silurian rocks from Gondwana but have never been reported from Africa. A single theca of Mespilocystites sp. is the first representative of this blastozoan clade from the African continent, extending its geographical range. Previous reports of Mespilocystites include the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The African specimen was collected from the Upper Ordovician (Katian) Upper Tiouririne Formation of the Moroccan Anti-Atlas Ranges, and is preserved in siliciclastic rocks associated with isorophid edrioasteroids and echinosphaeritid rhombiferans.