CAMBRIAN 538.8 ±0.

2 (Ma)
Age of Golden Age of
The designation of "Cambrian" was coined by the Invertebrates Trilobites
British Geologist Adam Sedgwick in the year
1835.
MAJOR PALEOZOIC CONTINENTS
CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION Six major continents (Gondwana, Laurentia, Baltica,
First appearance of organisms with shells Kazakhstania, Asia, and Siberia) and numerous
microcontinents (Avalonia, etc.) and island arcs existed at the
First Appearance of beginning of the Paleozoic Era; all of these were dispersed
BENTHIC FORAMINEFERA around the globe at low latitudes during the Cambrian.

These are protozoa, which evolved during the

Cambrian and inhabited all possible marine
environments from shallow water intertidal
regions to deep trenches.

Paleogeography of the world during the Late Cambrian Period

Sketch showing the main morphological features of larger benthic foraminifera. Modified after Carpenter, 1850. MAJOR GROUP OF CAMBRIAN ORGANISMS
Ostracoderms
- Earliest vertebrates 1. TRILOBITES - Half of total fauna
- Jawless fish 2. BRACHIOPODS - Mostly primitive types known as
- Oldest of Class Agnatha inarticulates that secreted a chitinophosphate shell that
Sauk Transgression was composed of the organic compound chitin combined
- First Phanerozoic Transgression with calcium phosphate.
- Melting of Varangian Glaciation 3. ARCHAEOCYATHIDS - First reef builders
Sauk Sequence

ORDOVICIAN
- First major transgression onto the North America
485 Ma

SIGNIFICANT GEOLOGIC EVENTS The Ordovician was named by Lapworth after

the Celtic tribe of the Ordovices
Taconic Orogeny – first of the number
Appalachian Mobile Belt 3 orogenies to affect the EVOLUTION OF LIFE
Appalachian
Nautiloids – dominant predators
Greenstone Clastic Wedge = Taconic Orogeny
Bryophyta - non-vascular plants (moss)
Eurypterids - sea scorpions
Cephalopods - abundant (food source on Paleozoic)

3 ORDOVICIAN FOSSIL GROUP

1. Articulate Brachiopods – shell
2. Graptolites – planktonic invertebrates
3. Conodonts – (tooth-like apatite fossils)
--- Agnathian “jawless”

Iapetus Plate subducted forming the Appalachian REEF BUILDERS OF ORDOVICIAN

Mountain Belt Replaced by Sclerictanians during Triassic
Cambrian: Sauk Transgression
Ordovician: Tippecanoe TABULATA CORAL
Ordovician-Silurian Mass Extinction Made of tiny colonial
(Hirtnanian – Rhuddanian M.E.) animals that generally build
stony skeletons of calcium
carbonate
2nd largest mass extinction (1st Permian)
85% casualty RUGOSE CORAL

Cause: Gondwana moved southwards Often called horn corals

(Glaciation and sea level fall) because many species have
a horn shape
Andean-Saharan Glaciation (Ordo-Silurian Glaciation)
PHANEROZOIC: PALEOZOIC ERA
WILLIAM SMITH
Published the worlds first true geologic map (Map of England)
Independently discovered Steno’s Principle of Superposition
England is rich in geologic history.

5 out of 6 geologic period/systems were named for rocks exposed

in England:

(1) Cambrian (Wales) (2) Ordovician (Wales) (3) Silurian (Wales)

(4) Devonian (Devon. England) (5) Carboniferous (England)

CRATONS PARTS OF A CRATON

Shields
The exposed portion of the crystalline
basement rocks of a continent, are composed
of Precambrian metamorphic and igneous
Stable immobile parts of continent rocks.
During the Phanerozoic, however, shields were
and form the foundation on which extremely stable and formed the foundations
Phanerozoic sediments were of the continents.
deposited.
Platform
Extending outward from the shields are buried
Precambrian rocks that constitute a platform.

MOBILE BELT
Elongated areas of mountain-building activity.
They are located along the margins of continents
where sediments are deposited in the relatively
shallow waters of the continental shelf and the
deeper waters at the base of the continental slope.

4 Mobile Belts around the margin of the North

American Craton during the Paleozoic Era:
1. Franklin 3. Ouachita
2. Cordilleran 4. Appalachian Mobile Belt