The Silurian system was first identified by the Scottish geologist
Roderick Murchison, who was examining fossil-bearing sedimentary rock
strata in south
Wales in the early 1830s. He named the sequences for a
Celtic tribe of Wales, the
Silures, inspired by his friend
Adam Sedgwick, who had named the period of his study the
Cambrian, from the
Latin name for Wales.[17] This naming does not indicate any correlation between the occurrence of the Silurian rocks and the land inhabited by the Silures (
cf.
Geologic map of Wales,
Map of pre-Roman tribes of Wales). In 1835 the two men presented a joint paper, under the title On the Silurian and Cambrian Systems, Exhibiting the Order in which the Older Sedimentary Strata Succeed each other in England and Wales, which was the germ of the modern
geological time scale.[18] As it was first identified, the "Silurian" series when traced farther afield quickly came to overlap Sedgwick's "Cambrian" sequence, however, provoking furious disagreements that ended the friendship.
The French geologist
Joachim Barrande, building on Murchison's work, used the term Silurian in a more comprehensive sense than was justified by subsequent knowledge. He divided the Silurian rocks of
Bohemia into eight stages.[21] His interpretation was questioned in 1854 by
Edward Forbes,[22] and the later stages of Barrande; F, G and H have since been shown to be Devonian. Despite these modifications in the original groupings of the strata, it is recognized that Barrande established Bohemia as a classic ground for the study of the earliest Silurian fossils.
During the Wenlock, the oldest-known
tracheophytes of the genus Cooksonia, appear. The complexity of slightly later
Gondwana plants like Baragwanathia, which resembled a modern clubmoss, indicates a much longer history for vascular plants, extending into the early Silurian or even
Ordovician.[citation needed] The first terrestrial animals also appear in the Wenlock, represented by air-breathing
millipedes from
Scotland.[23]
Named after a locality at the Homolka a Přídolí nature reserve near the
Prague suburb of
Slivenec,
Czech Republic.
Přídolí is the old name of a
cadastral field area.[24]
Paleogeography
With the supercontinent
Gondwana covering the equator and much of the southern hemisphere, a large ocean occupied most of the northern half of the globe.[25] The high sea levels of the Silurian and the relatively flat land (with few significant mountain belts) resulted in a number of island chains, and thus a rich diversity of environmental settings.[25]
During the Silurian, Gondwana continued a slow southward drift to high southern latitudes, but there is evidence that the Silurian icecaps were less extensive than those of the late-Ordovician glaciation. The southern continents remained united during this period. The melting of icecaps and
glaciers contributed to a rise in sea level, recognizable from the fact that Silurian sediments overlie eroded Ordovician sediments, forming an
unconformity. The continents of
Avalonia,
Baltica, and
Laurentiadrifted together near the
equator, starting the formation of a second
supercontinent known as
Euramerica.
When the proto-Europe collided with North America, the collision folded coastal sediments that had been accumulating since the Cambrian off the east coast of North America and the west coast of Europe. This event is the
Caledonian orogeny, a spate of mountain building that stretched from
New York State through conjoined Europe and Greenland to Norway. At the end of the Silurian, sea levels dropped again, leaving telltale basins of
evaporites extending from Michigan to West Virginia, and the new mountain ranges were rapidly eroded. The
Teays River, flowing into the shallow mid-continental sea, eroded Ordovician Period strata, forming deposits of Silurian strata in northern Ohio and Indiana.
The vast ocean of
Panthalassa covered most of the northern hemisphere. Other minor oceans include two phases of the Tethys, the
Proto-Tethys and
Paleo-Tethys, the
Rheic Ocean, the
Iapetus Ocean (a narrow seaway between Avalonia and Laurentia), and the newly formed
Ural Ocean.
Climate and sea level
The Silurian period was once believed to have enjoyed relatively stable and warm temperatures, in contrast with the extreme glaciations of the Ordovician before it and the extreme heat of the ensuing Devonian; however, it is now known that the global climate underwent many drastic fluctuations throughout the Silurian,[26][27] evidenced by numerous major carbon and oxygen isotope excursions during this geologic period.[28][29][30] Sea levels rose from their
Hirnantian low throughout the first half of the Silurian; they subsequently fell throughout the rest of the period, although smaller scale patterns are superimposed on this general trend; fifteen high-stands (periods when sea levels were above the edge of the continental shelf) can be identified, and the highest Silurian sea level was probably around 140 metres (459 ft) higher than the lowest level reached.[25]
During this period, the
Earth entered a warm
greenhouse phase, supported by high CO2 levels of 4500 ppm, and warm shallow seas covered much of the equatorial land masses.[31] Early in the Silurian,
glaciers retreated back into the
South Pole until they almost disappeared in the middle of Silurian.[27] Layers of broken shells (called
coquina) provide strong evidence of a climate dominated by violent storms generated then as now by warm sea surfaces.[32]
Perturbations
The climate and
carbon cycle appear to be rather unsettled during the Silurian, which had a higher frequency of isotopic excursions (indicative of climate fluctuations) than any other period.[25] The
Ireviken event,
Mulde event, and
Lau event each represent isotopic excursions following a minor mass extinction[33] and associated with rapid sea-level change. Each one leaves a similar signature in the geological record, both geochemically and biologically; pelagic (free-swimming) organisms were particularly hard hit, as were
brachiopods,
corals, and
trilobites, and extinctions rarely occur in a rapid series of fast bursts.[25][30] The climate fluctuations are best explained by a sequence of glaciations, but the lack of
tillites in the middle to late Silurian make this explanation problematic.[34]
Flora and fauna
The Silurian period has been viewed by some palaeontologists as an extended recovery interval following the
Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME), which interrupted the cascading increase in biodiversity that had continuously gone on throughout the Cambrian and most of the Ordovician.[35]
The Silurian was the first period to see megafossils of extensive terrestrial biota in the form of
moss-like miniature forests along lakes and streams and networks of large, mycorrhizal
nematophytes, heralding the beginning of the Silurian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution.[12][13][36] However, the land fauna did not have a major impact on the Earth until it diversified in the Devonian.[25]
The first fossil records of
vascular plants, that is, land plants with tissues that carry water and food, appeared in the second half of the Silurian Period.[37] The earliest-known representatives of this group are Cooksonia. Most of the sediments containing Cooksonia are marine in nature. Preferred habitats were likely along rivers and streams. Baragwanathia appears to be almost as old, dating to the early Ludlow (420 million years) and has branching stems and needle-like leaves of 10–20 centimetres (3.9–7.9 in). The plant shows a high degree of development in relation to the age of its fossil remains. Fossils of this plant have been recorded in Australia,[38][39] Canada,[40] and China.[41]Eohostimella heathana is an early, probably terrestrial, "plant" known from compression fossils[42] of Early Silurian (Llandovery) age.[43] The chemistry of its fossils is similar to that of fossilised vascular plants, rather than algae.[42]
Fossils that are considered as terrestrial animals are also known from the Silurian. The definitive oldest record of
millipede ever known is Kampecaris obanensis and Archidesmus sp. from the late Silurian (425 million years ago) of
Kerrera.[44] There are also millipedes,
centipedes, and
trigonotarbid arachnoids known from
Ludlow (420 million years ago).[44][45][46] Predatory
invertebrates would indicate that simple
food webs were in place that included non-predatory prey animals. Extrapolating back from
Early Devonian biota, Andrew Jeram et al. in 1990[47] suggested a food web based on as-yet-undiscovered
detritivores and grazers on micro-organisms.[48] Millipedes from
Cowie Formation such as Cowiedesmus and Pneumodesmus were considered as the oldest millipede from the middle Silurian at 428 million years ago.[23][49] Though the age of this formation is later reinterpreted to be from the early
Devonian instead by some researchers,[50] a more subsequent study in 2023 has reconfirmed its age to be the late
Wenlock epoch of the middle Silurian.[51] Regardless, Pneumodesmus is still an important fossil as the oldest definitive evidence of
spiracles to breath in the air.[44]
The first bony fish, the
Osteichthyes, appeared, represented by the
Acanthodians covered with bony scales. Fish reached considerable diversity and developed movable
jaws, adapted from the supports of the front two or three
gill arches. A diverse fauna of
eurypterids (sea scorpions)—some of them several meters in length—prowled the shallow Silurian seas and lakes of North America; many of their
fossils have been found in
New York state.
Leeches also made their appearance during the Silurian Period. Brachiopods were abundant and diverse, with the taxonomic composition, ecology, and biodiversity of Silurian brachiopods mirroring Ordovician ones.[52] Brachiopods that survived the LOME developed novel adaptations for environmental stress,[53] and they tended to be endemic to a single palaeoplate in the mass extinction's aftermath, but expanded their range afterwards.[54] The most abundant brachiopods were atrypids and pentamerides;[55] atrypids were the first to recover and rediversify in the Rhuddanian after LOME,[56] while pentameride recovery was delayed until the Aeronian.[55]Bryozoans exhibited significant degrees of endemism to a particular shelf.[57] They also developed symbiotic relationships with cnidarians[58] and stromatolites.[59] Many
bivalve fossils have also been found in Silurian deposits,[60] and the first deep-boring bivalves are known from this period.[61]Chitons saw a peak in diversity during the middle of the Silurian.[62]Hederelloids enjoyed significant success in the Silurian, with some developing symbioses with the colonial rugose coral Entelophyllum.[63] The Silurian was a heyday for
tentaculitoids,[64] which experienced an evolutionary radiation focused mainly in Baltoscandia,[65] along with an expansion of their geographic range in the Llandovery and Wenlock.[66]Trilobites started to recover in the Rhuddanian,[67] and they continued to enjoy success in the Silurian as they had in the Ordovician despite their reduction in clade diversity as a result of LOME.[68] The Early Silurian was a chaotic time of turnover for
crinoids as they rediversified after LOME.[69] Members of Flexibilia, which were minimally impacted by LOME, took on an increasing ecological prominence in Silurian seas.[70] Monobathrid camerates, like flexibles, diversified in the Llandovery, whereas cyathocrinids and dendrocrinids diversified later in the Silurian.[71] Scyphocrinoid loboliths suddenly appeared in the terminal Silurian, shortly before the Silurian-Devonian boundary, and disappeared as abruptly as they appeared very shortly after their first appearance.[72] Endobiotic symbionts were common in the corals and stromatoporoids.[73][74] Rugose corals especially were colonised and encrusted by a diverse range of epibionts,[75] including certain hederelloids as aforementioned.[63]Photosymbiotic scleractinians made their first appearance during the Middle Silurian.[76] Reef abundance was patchy; sometimes, fossils are frequent, but at other points, are virtually absent from the rock record.[25]
Cooksonia, the earliest vascular plant, middle Silurian
Silurian sea bed fossils collected from Wren's Nest Nature Reserve, Dudley UK
Crinoid fragments in a Silurian (Pridoli) limestone (
Saaremaa, Estonia)
Silurian sea bed fossils collected from Wren's Nest Nature Reserve, Dudley UK
^Jeppsson, L.; Calner, M. (2007). "The Silurian Mulde Event and a scenario for secundo—secundo events". Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 93 (02): 135–154.
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10.1017/S0263593300000377.
^Munnecke, A.; Samtleben, C.; Bickert, T. (2003). "The Ireviken Event in the lower Silurian of Gotland, Sweden-relation to similar Palaeozoic and Proterozoic events". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 195 (1): 99–124.
doi:
10.1016/S0031-0182(03)00304-3.
^"Chart/Time Scale". www.stratigraphy.org. International Commission on Stratigraphy.
Murchison, Roderick Impey (1835).
"On the Silurian system of rocks". Philosophical Magazine. 3rd series. 7 (37): 46–52.
doi:
10.1080/14786443508648654. From p. 48: " … I venture to suggest, that as the great mass of rocks in question, trending from south-west to north-east, traverses the kingdom of our ancestors the Silures, the term "Silurian system" should be adopted … "
^Lapworth, Charles (1879).
"On the tripartite classification of the Lower Palaeozoic rocks". Geological Magazine. 2nd series. 6 (1): 1–15.
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10.1017/s0016756800156560.
S2CID129165105. From pp. 13–14: "North Wales itself – at all events the whole of the great Bala district where Sedgwick first worked out the physical succession among the rocks of the intermediate or so-called Upper Cambrian or Lower Silurian system; and in all probability much of the Shelve and the Caradoc area, whence Murchison first published its distinctive fossils – lay within the territory of the Ordovices; … Here, then, have we the hint for the appropriate title for the central system of the Lower Palaeozoics. It should be called the Ordovician System, after this old British tribe."
^The Gotlandian system was proposed in 1893 by the French geologist
Albert Auguste Cochon de Lapparent (1839–1908): Lapparent, A. de (1893).
Traité de Géologie (in French). Vol. 2 (3rd ed.). Paris, France: F. Savy. p. 748. From p. 748: "D'accord avec ces divisions, on distingue communément dans le silurien trois étages: l'étage inférieur ou cambrien (1); l'étage moyen ou ordovicien (2); l'étage supérieur ou gothlandien (3)." (In agreement with these divisions, one generally distinguishes, within the Silurian, three stages: the lower stage or Cambrian [1]; the middle stage or Ordovician [2]; the upper stage or Gotlandian [3].)
^
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^Samtleben, C.; Munnecke, A.; Bickert, T. (2000). "Development of facies and C/O-isotopes in transects through the Ludlow of Gotland: Evidence for global and local influences on a shallow-marine environment". Facies. 43: 1–38.
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^Hueber, F.M. (1983). "A new species of Baragwanathia from the Sextant Formation (Emsian) Northern Ontario, Canada". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 86 (1–2): 57–79.
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^DiMichele, William A; Hook, Robert W (1992).
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