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EARTH HISTORY

Ordovician oxygen and biodiversity

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 887–888 (2017)Cite this article

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Rising oxygen levels may have facilitated the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event according to a reconstruction of atmospheric oxygen concentrations.

The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event encapsulates the greatest increase in marine family- and genus-level diversity in Earth’s history1. A series of physical and biotic factors have been proposed as causes or drivers of the biodiversification, including meteorite bombardment1, global cooling2, changes in ocean circulation3, increased plankton abundance and predation pressures4. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Edwards et al.5 report the most compelling data yet that atmospheric oxygenation concentrations increased significantly throughout the Ordovician period and argue that increased oxygen availability facilitated diversification.

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Fig. 1: The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event.

Left and middle adapted from ref. 5, Macmillan Publishers Ltd; right adapted from ref. 2, AAAS.

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, Ohio Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Studies, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    Alycia L. Stigall

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  1. Alycia L. Stigall
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Correspondence to Alycia L. Stigall.

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Stigall, A.L. Ordovician oxygen and biodiversity. Nature Geosci 10, 887–888 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-017-0024-1

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