Paleozoic Age
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The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. . Also known as "The Age of the Fish", the Devonian featured a huge diversification of fish, including armored fish like Dunkleosteus and. The Paleozoic Era occurred from about million years ago to million Most creepily, this era is sometimes referred to as the "Age of the.
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Paleozoic Era: Facts & Information
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We'll publish them on our site once we've reviewed them. Item s unavailable for purchase. Cold climates with icebergs abounded. The Silurian, so named after a Celtic tribe called the Silures, realized additional marked changes for Earth that affected life significantly.
Sea levels rose as the climate stabilized, at least compared to the prior millions of years. Coral reefs made their first appearance and expanded.
Land plants evolved in the moist regions near the Equator. The Silurian was also a remarkable time in the evolution of fishes. Not only does this time period mark the wide and rapid spread of jawless fish, but also the highly significant appearances of both the first known freshwater fish as well as the first fish with jaws, which resulted from an adaptation of an anterior gill arch. The Silurian strata has fossils that are substantive evidence of life on land, particularly the arthropod groups. The fossils of the earliest of vascular plants are also prevalent. In the oceans, there was a widespread radiation of crinoids and a continuation of the expansion of the brachiopods.
The Devonian was a time of great change across the Tree of Life. Reef ecosystems saw new and more varied forms, including the ammonoids and fish.
It was also a time when life achieved the critical event of adapting to land. A time of great transition. Two major clades of animal moved ashore and rapidly radiated. Both the first tetrapods, or four legged land-living vertebrates, and the first arthropods colonized the land, including wingless insects and the earliest arachnids. In the sea, ammonoids and fish evolve and quickly diversify.
Primitive plants that gained a foothold in the Silurian went on to form forests. Arthropods and ultimately tetrapods were plodding the lands. The first insects, spiders, and tetrapods evolve. In the Lower Devonian, plants were very tiny and primitive, generally lacking the leaf, root and vascular systems that would soon appear. But plant radiation was already progressing rapidly and led to the ferns, horsetails and seed plants. By the late Devonian earth had forests of tall rooted trees covered with leaves.
The lycophytes Phylum Lycopodiophyta are the oldest extant lineage of vascular plants e. The Lycopods that reproduced by way of spores went on to form vast swamp forests during the Carboniferous period with the Lepidodendrales e. Sigillaria is another example of a lycopod tree. The seed-bearing Gymnosperms appeared near the end of the Devonian, an adaptation ultimately leading to propagation to dryer habitats. The Devonian is often appropriately called the "Age of Fishes", since the fish took their place in complex reef systems containing nautiloids, corals, graptolites, blastods, echinoderms, trilobites, sponges, brachiopods and conodonts.
With the many new forms of predators, trilobites continue to evolve their defensive strategies. During the Devonian, Placodermi armored fish , Sarcopterygii lobe-finned fish and lungfish and Actinopterygii conventional bony fish or ray-finned fish evolved rapidly, many of which became huge and fierce predators. Until later in the Devonian the fishes were the only vertebrates, and gave rise to all other vertebrate lineages.
The first sarcopterygiians , or the lobe-finned fish, appeared whose descendants were the first tetrapods that also evolved before by the Uper Devonian. The class Chondrichthyes , the cartilaginous fish, including skates, rays, and sharks appeared during the Devonian period.
Arthropods radiated to become well-established on land in the Devonian, and in some cases attained impressive size. The earliest known Hexapods appear in the Devonian fossil record. The increasing biomass of land plants and higher oxygen levels by the end of the Devonian faciliated the adaption to terrestrial life of herbivorous animals. The arthropods colonized the land, including wingless insects and the earliest arachnids. Trilobites declined despite their newly evolved armaments and stealthy ways , possibly due to increasingly widespread and ever more skillful predators.
The Carboniferous Period derives its name from the massive deposits of coal found in U. During the Carboniferous, the continents below the equator still formed the supercontinent Gondwana. Life flourished in the seas in the wake of the late Devonian Extinction. Ammonoids rediversified very quickly.
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Crinoids, blastoids, brachiopods and bryozoans and single-celled Eukaryotes fusulinids known as fusulinids became abundant. The ray finned fishes radiate enormously. However, the age of the trilobite was drawing to a close. After radiations Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian periods, the nine trilobite orders had shrunk to one remaining in the Carboniferous, the Order Proetida, that too would go extinct at the end of the Permian.
Life on land really took root in the Carboniferous, setting the stage for huge coal deposits to be formed in low-laying swamps. Common in the coal producing swamps spore bearing Lycopod trees that grew to more than feet tall, Sigillaria and both spore-bearing and seed ferns. The early wingless insect forms that appeared in the Devonian acquire wings, and continue their radiation filling ever-expanding environmental niches. Despite the appearance of seeds, most Carboniferous plants continued to use spores from reproduction.
The moist and swampy environments of the Carboniferous enabled the Lycophytes i. However, the dependency on a moist environment caused the extinction of most taxa during arid conditions that prevailed near the end of the Paleozoic. Similary, Calamites and ferns were other spore-bearing plants that appeared during the Devonian and thrived during the following Carboniferous period. Reptiles first appear in the Pennsylvanian, following the appearance of amphibians in the Devonian.
The amniote egg appears, an important evolutionary invent that set the stage for further colonization of the land by tetrapods. The ancestors of birds, mammals, and reptiles could then reproduce on land since the embryo no longer required an acqeous environment. The Permian Period extends from about to million years ago, and is the last geological period of the Palaeozoic Era. The Permian ended with the most extensive extinction event recorded in paleontology: Life on land included a diversity of plants, arthropods, amphibians and reptiles.