Latest Brachiopod Stories

A basic tenet underpinning scientists' understanding of extinction is that more abundant species persist longer than their less abundant counterparts, but a new University of Georgia study reveals a much more complex relationship. A team of scientists analyzed more than 46,000 fossils from 52 sites and found that greater numbers did indeed help clam-like brachiopods survive the Ordovician extinction, which killed off approximately half of the Earth's life forms some 444 million years ago....

Researchers use a ground-breaking technique that reveals a relationship between cooler temperatures and Earth's second largest mass extinction, which occurred about 450 million years agoIn the Late Ordovician Period of Earth's geologic history, about 450 million years ago, more than 75 percent of marine species perished and Earth scientists have been seeking to discover what caused the extinction. It was the second largest in Earth's history.Now, using a new research method, investigators...

Collapse of Earth's marine life 378 to 375 million years ago holds keyAn influx of invasive species can stop the dominant natural process of new species formation and trigger mass extinction events, according to research results published Dec. 29 in the journal PLoS ONE.The study of the collapse of Earth's marine life 378 to 375 million years ago suggests that the planet's current ecosystems, which are struggling with biodiversity loss, could meet a similar fate.Although Earth has experienced...

By Novack-Gottshall, Philip M Abstract.- The process of evolution hinders our ability to make large-scale ecological comparisons-such as those encompassing marine biotas spanning the Phanerozoic-because the compared entities are taxonomically and morphologically dissimilar. One solution is to focus instead on life habits, which are repeatedly discovered by taxa because of convergence. Such an approach is applied to a comparison of the ecological diversity of Paleozoic (Cambrian- Devonian)...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - In the classic textbook example, predators and prey are locked in an escalating evolutionary arms race. As prey develop defenses against their attackers, predators go them one better, devising new ways of penetrating their victims' defenses. But it doesn't always happen that way, and investigating systems in which prey don't respond to predation by upping the ante can be as informative as studying the more typical sort, said University of Michigan paleontologist Tomasz...

Blacksburg, Va. - A study of fossils from the Paleozoic Era, collected across the world, reveals that ancient brachiopods were little bothered by predators. However, the rare predation traces left on brachiopod shells by unknown assailants coupled with a subtle increase in their frequency through time may be the shadows on the wall that show killers were in the room and their numbers increased with time. From 550 million years ago until 250 million years ago, brachiopods, or...

A Johns Hopkins University graduate student may have figured out why rates of extinction were so low for many of the major groups of marine life during one of the greatest ice ages of them all, which occurred from about 330 million to 290 million years ago, late in the Paleozoic Era. The likely answer: because those aquatic life forms that did survive during this era were singularly equipped to endure severe fluctuations in temperature and sea levels. Those that were not died in a mass...