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Gondwana was a massive continent, three times the size of any of the other Cambrian continents. Its continental land area extended from the south pole to north of the equator. Around it were extensive shallow seas and numerous smaller land areas. [6] The cratons that formed Gondwana came together during the Neoproterozoic to early Cambrian.
The Taconic orogeny, a major mountain-building episode, was well under way in Cambrian times. [27] This continued into the Ordovician, when at least two volcanic island arcs collided with Laurentia to form the Appalachian Mountains. Laurentia was otherwise tectonically stable.
The Cambrian explosion (also known as Cambrian radiation [1] or Cambrian diversification) is an interval of time beginning approximately in the Cambrian period of the early Paleozoic, when a sudden radiation of complex life occurred and practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.
It has recently been proposed that during middle to late Cambrian times Patagonia was accreted to East Antarctica, [5] an event that led to the initiation of the Ross orogeny. Following this collision, a transition to extension in the late Ordovician- Silurian resulted in the separation of Patagonia from Antarctica and the formation of a ...
Proterozoic: this eon refers to the time from the lower Cambrian boundary, 538.8 Ma, back through 2500 Ma. As originally used, it was a synonym for "Precambrian" and hence included everything prior to the Cambrian boundary. [citation needed] The Proterozoic Eon is divided into three eras: the Neoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic and Paleoproterozoic.
This is significantly more severe than the ice ages during the Phanerozoic. Because this ice age terminated only slightly before the rapid diversification of life during the Cambrian explosion, it has been proposed that this ice age (or at least its end) created conditions favorable to evolution. The earlier Sturtian glacial maxima (~730 ...
Trilobites, which had thrived since Cambrian times, finally became extinct before the end of the Permian. Nautiloids , a subclass of cephalopods, surprisingly survived this occurrence. There is evidence that magma , in the form of flood basalt , poured onto the Earth's surface in what is now called the Siberian Traps , for thousands of years ...
This timeline of Cambrian research is a chronological listing of events in the history of geology and paleontology focused on the study of Earth during the span of time lasting from 538.8 to 485.4 million years ago (dates as per 2022 revision) [1] and the legacies of this period in the rock and fossil records.