The end of the Ordovician, in contrast, was kicked off by the Earth’s thermostat firmly flipping to “cold” – and much like ...

The Ordovician Period was around 485 to 444 million years ago and had a thriving ecosystem beneath the water, before fauna ...

Teeth are good for chewing and biting, but they are also sensitive – and that may have been their original function hundreds ...

Sensory features on the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish may be the reason why humans have teeth that are sensitive to ...

In some ways, the newfound fossils resemble an animal group known as opabiniids ... snooted "tiny alien shrimp-worm" zipping through the Ordovician ocean, he told Live Science in a message ...

The series of extinctions that occurred during the Ordovician and Silurian periods between 445 and 415 million years ago wiped out as much as 85 percent of all animal species on Earth. It was the ...

The Ordovician was a critical time in the history of life when extraordinary diversification of animals occurred and more familiar ecosystems like coral reefs began to appear at the end of the period.

Teeth are sensitive because they evolved from sensory tissue in both ancient vertebrates and ancient arthropods.

What died: Animals that didn’t make it include most trilobite species, many corals and several brachiopods, a hard-shell marine invertebrate often mistaken for a clam today. What thrived: Sea sponges ...

animals such as large arthropods are more likely to be preserved than small planarians or other aquatic worms. "This could explain why fossil communities dating from the Cambrian and Ordovician ...

A study published this month links an uptick in impact craters during the Ordovician Period, an era before animals lived on land, to a ring made of asteroid debris that encircled our planet for ...