[56], Dunkleosteus, one of the largest armoured fish ever to roam the planet, lived during the Late Devonian. A Guide to the Blackfeet Tribe: Location,, Carboniferous Period: Facts, Information and Timeline, ManyPets Pet Insurance Review: Pros, Cons, and Coverage, Discover the Ancient Fishapod That Could Walk on Land, Meet the 8-Foot Giant Millipede That Once Roamed the Earth, The Cretaceous Period: Major Events, Animals, and When It Lasted, The Busiest Airports In the United States, Ranked, Discover the 5 Highest Bridges in the United States, The Coldest Temperature Ever Recorded in Tennessee Is Devastatingly Cold, 5 Huge Predators Larger Than Todays Bald Eagles, Devonian Period: Facts, Information, and Timeline, The wide distribution of evaporite basins in the Northern Hemisphere, The abundance of coal deposits in some parts of the world, Devonian salt deposits, which indicate high evaporation rates, Britannica, Available here: https://www.britannica.com/science/Devonian-Period/Devonian-life, University of California Museum of Paleontology, Available here: https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/devonian/devonian.php, National Geographic, Available here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/devonian. [37], The Devonian saw significant expansion in the diversity of nektonic marine life driven by the abundance of planktonic microorganisms in the free water column as well as high ecological competition in benthic habitats, which were extremely saturated; this diversification has been labeled the Devonian Nekton Revolution by many researchers. Mucrospirifer prolificus,three specimens photographed from different views showing aspects of shell structure: Paraspirifer bownockeriis more compact, but deeply grooved on one valve, with a corresponding ridge on the other. Finally, the tabulate coralAulopora microbuccinatacovers a brachiopod shell. Placoderms and the first groups of jawed fish began to appear in the Middle Devonian. (The greater Paleozoic Era lasted from 541 million years to 252 million years ago, before making way for the Mesozoic Era, the time of the dinosaurs.) The largest continent, Gondwana, was located entirely within the Southern Hemisphere. [27][30] Mountain building could also be found in the far northeastern extent of the continent, as minor tropical island arcs and detached Baltic terranes re-join the continent. [21], The Devonian has also erroneously been characterised as a "greenhouse age", due to sampling bias: most of the early Devonian-age discoveries came from the strata of western Europe and eastern North America, which at the time straddled the Equator as part of the supercontinent of Euramerica where fossil signatures of widespread reefs indicate tropical climates that were warm and moderately humid. Solitary corals appear as the red horn coralLophophyllum, the horn coralHeliophyllumsp., and as white shapes in a slab of black stone. Orthospirifer cooperi: this specimenhas another type of brachiopod,Phloihedronsp. Dated from the mid-Devonian, this fossil creature is considered to be the link between the lobe-finned fishes and early amphibians. Sponges (ToL: Porifera Ellesmere Port Obituary Notices, Articles W