Early–Middle Paleozoic ecosystem evolution and revolution (Part 1 of 2): an introduction

Abstract

Papers included in this special issue have been derived and developed mostly from contributions presented at the 5th Annual Meeting of the International Geoscience Programme (IGCP) Project 591, held jointly with the 5th International Symposium on the Silurian System sponsored by the International Subcommission on Silurian Stratigraphy (ISSS). The joint meeting was hosted by the Institut national de la recherche scientifique – Eau Terre Environnement (INRS–ETE) in Quebec City, Canada, including 3 days of scientific sessions, a pre-conference field excursion to the Gaspe Peninsula, a mid-conference excursion to the vicinity of Quebec City, and a post-conference excursion to Anticosti Island, Quebec. Built on the tremendous success and momentum gathered by its two predecessors, the IGCP Project 410 (The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, 1997–2002; Webby et al. 2004) and Project 503 (Ordovician Palaeogeography and Palaeoclimate, 2004– 2009; Harper et al. 2011), the current IGCP Project 591 (The Early to Middle Paleozoic Revolution) aims to enrich our knowledge about the geological interval from the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) to the expansion of the terrestrial ecosystems in the Devonian. After the Cambrian Explosion that saw the origin of nearly all animal phyla, the GOBE was marked by an exponential increase in diversity in terms of ordinal, superfamilial, and familial taxonomic units. Life evolution from the Early Ordovician to the Early Devonian, the key geological interval targeted by IGCP 591, was associated with a large number of significant paleoenvironmental events in Earth history, leading to global ecosystem revolutions, …