The end-Ordovician glaciation and the Hirnantian Stage: A global review and questions about Late Ordovician event stratigraphy

Abstract

This paper proposes a global review of Hirnantian event stratigraphy. The Hirnantian GSSP in south China is tentatively correlated with latest Ordovician strata from the peri-Gondwanan “glacial” regions. Problems of biostratigraphical correlation are highlighted. At a worldwide scale, the major biostratigraphically useful fossil groups (graptolites, chitinozoans, brachiopods, conodonts, acritarchs) are analysed and their limits for global correlation of the uppermost Ordovician are discussed. Palaeobiogeographical disparities are invoked as the primary cause of the difficulty in establishing an effective Late Ordovician global biostratigraphical scheme. As an alternative correlative tool, the HICE (Hirnantian Isotopic Curve Excursion) event is often put forward in the literature. However, carbon isotope chemostratigraphy shows, like biostratigraphy, some limits to the present state of knowledge. No good independent biostratigraphical control of the HICE exists in both shallow carbonate deposits and deeper shaly ones. Recent studies have also demonstrated inconsistencies between carbon isotopic signals obtained from organic ( δ 13C org) and inorganic ( δ 13C carb) carbon species, further complicating the use of the HICE as an isochronous benchmark. All of these difficulties for Hirnantian event stratigraphy are discussed in detail in order to enable them to be overcome in the future. Precise Late Ordovician and early Silurian event stratigraphies are essential for the understanding of the mechanisms linked to the first of the “Big Five” extinctions.