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Fossil Find Fills in Picture of Ancient Marine Life

  • 22-05-2010 9:11pm
    #1
    marco_polo
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 10,088 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    A very signifigant newly discovered fossil site in southeastern Morocco reveasl a large number of exceptionally well preserved soft bodied fossils from marine animals that lived between 480 million and 472 million years ago, during the early Ordovician period.

    I imagine that the contents of this site this will be the source of numerous threads here over the next number of years. :)
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100513123829.htm

    "The early Ordovician was a critical moment when massive diversification takes off, but we were only seeing a small piece of the picture that was based almost exclusively on the shelly fossil record," Briggs said. "Normal faunas are dominated by the soft-bodied organisms we knew were missing, so these exceptionally well-preserved fossils have filled in much of the missing picture."

    The site in Morocco where the fossils were discovered was conducive to preserving even the soft tissues of the creatures that lived in its waters so long ago, thanks to generally calm waters, occasional rapid burial that protected the animals from scavengers, and favorable chemical conditions within the sediment that allowed for the rapid mineralization of soft tissue as it decayed.

    In addition to providing a more complete understanding of marine life at that time, the team's discovery upends a long-held belief that so-called Burgess Shale-type faunas, which are typical for the Early to Middle Cambrian, disappeared at the end of the Middle Cambrian epoch, some 499 million years ago.
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