Ordovician

Life on earth in the Ordovician was to change for ever. Towards the end of the period it moved onto land. Not animals yet, that’s not til the Silurian, the first plants began to live outside the sea in the Ordovician. In-fact, these plants would be recognisable today, as they were mosses, which could cling to the soiless rock. Carbon dioxide levels were much higher, and there was less oxygen than today. The climate was cooler than the Cambrian, and by the end of the Ordovician, was cooler than ours. In-fact, evidence now suggests the there may have been what geologist call a “Snowball Earth” event, when ice may have reached almost if not actually to the equator! There have also been other “Snowball Earths”, the most famous occurred around a billion years ago, in the Pre-Cambrian.

Click here to see our Ordovician fossils.

←Palaeozoic era

Silurian period→

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