Paleozoic Era, major interval ofgeologic time that began 538.8 million years ago with theCambrian explosion, an extraordinary diversification of marine animals, and ended about 252 million years ago with the end-Permian extinction, the greatest extinction event inEarth history. The major divisions of the Paleozoic Era, from oldest to youngest, are theCambrian (538.8 million to 485.4 million years ago),Ordovician (485.4 million to 443.8 million years ago),Silurian (443.8 million to 419.2 million years ago),Devonian (419.2 million to 358.9 million years ago),Carboniferous (358.9 million to 298.9 million years ago), and Permian (298.9 million to 252.2 million years ago) periods. The Paleozoic takes its name from the Greek word for ancient life.

Paleozoic life

The story of the earliest Paleozoic animals is one of life in the sea. Presumably simple fungi and related forms existed in freshwaterenvironments, but thefossil record provides no evidence of these modes of life. The terrestrialenvironment of the early Paleozoic was barren of the simplest of life-forms.

The Cambrian explosion was a sharp and sudden increase in the rate of evolution. About 538.8 million years ago, at the onset of the Cambrian Period, intense diversification resulted in more than 35 new animal phyla; however, new discoveries show that the “explosion” started roughly 575 million years ago, near the end of theProterozoic Eon (2.5 billion to 538.8 million years ago), with theEdiacara fauna. The biota rapidly diversified throughout the Cambrian and Ordovician periods as life-forms adapted to virtually all marine environments. In numbers of described marine species, fossils of trilobites dominate Cambrian rocks, whereasbrachiopods (lamp shells) predominate instrata from the Ordovician through the Permian Period.

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Several different kinds of organisms adapted independently to life on land, primarily during the middle Paleozoic. Leaflessvascular plants (psilophytes) andinvertebrate animals (centipede-likearthropods) were both established on land at least by Silurian time.Vertebrateanimals made the transition to land via theevolution of amphibians from air-breathing crossopterygian fish during Devonian times. Further conquest of the land became possible during the Carboniferous Period, when plants and animals evolved solutions to overcome their dependence on moist environments for reproduction: waterborne spores were replaced by seeds in plants of seed-fern origin, and shell-less eggs were replaced byamniote eggs with protective shells in animals of reptilian origin. Flight was first achieved also during the Carboniferous Period as insects evolved wings.

The Permianextinction, at the end of the Paleozoic Era, eliminated such major invertebrate groups as theblastoids (an extinct group of echinoderms related to the modern starfish andsea lilies),fusulinids, andtrilobites. Other major groups, which included theammonoids,brachiopods,bryozoans (moss animals), corals, andcrinoids (cuplike echinoderms with five or more feathery arms), were severelydecimated but managed to survive. It has been estimated that as many as 95 percent of the marine invertebrate species perished during the late Permian Period. Extinction rates were much lower among vertebrates, both aquatic and terrestrial, and among plants. Causes of this extinction event remain unclear, but they may be related to the changing climate and exceptionally low sea levels of the time. Although of lesser magnitude, other important Paleozoic mass extinctions occurred at the end of the Ordovician Period and during the late Devonian Period.

Paleozoic geography

On a global scale, the Paleozoic was a time ofcontinental assembly. The majority of Cambrian landmasses were gathered together to formGondwana, asupercontinent made up of the present-daycontinents ofAfrica,South America,Australia, andAntarctica and theIndian subcontinent. It extended from the northern tropics to the southern polar regions. With the exception of three major cratons (landmasses forming the stable interiors of continents) not part of the initialconfiguration of Gondwana, the remainder of Earth was covered by the global Panthalassic Ocean.

Laurentia, a craton primarily made up of present-dayNorth America andGreenland, was rotated 90° clockwise from its present orientation and sat astride the paleoequator during Cambrian times. Laurentia was separated from Gondwana by theIapetus Ocean. The smaller Baltica craton was positioned within the Iapetus Ocean, lying to the south of Laurentia and just off the northern margin of Gondwana. Baltica was made up of much of Scandinavia and westernEurope. To the east of Laurentia, the Siberian craton was positioned just south of the paleoequator between Laurentia and the western coast of Gondwana. Until the late Carboniferous Period, Siberia was rotated 180° from its present orientation.

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While a portion of Gondwana was positioned at or near theSouth Pole, there is no evidence of glaciation during Cambrian time. While little is known about the finer details of the Cambrian climate, geologic evidence shows that the margins of all continents were flooded by shallow seas. It is in the rock formed within these shallow seas that the greatest explosion of life ever recorded occurred. By Ordovician time, part ofGondwana had begun to move over the South Pole. The distribution ofextensive glacial deposits, which formed later in the Paleozoic, has been used to track the movement of parts of Gondwana over and around the South Pole.

Siberia, Baltica, and Laurentia also moved to new locations during the course of the Paleozoic. Siberia, essentially the large Asian portion of present-dayRussia, was a separate continent during the early and middle Paleozoic, when it moved from equatorial to northern temperate latitudes.Baltica moved across the paleoequator from southern cool temperate latitudes into northern warm latitudes during the Paleozoic. It collided with and joined Laurentia during the early Devonian Period. The beginnings of such mountainous regions as theAppalachians, Caledonides, and Urals resulted from the Paleozoic collision of the lithospheric plates. By the end of the Paleozoic, continued tectonic plate movements had forced these cratons together to form the supercontinent ofPangea. Large areas of all continents were episodically inundated by shallow seas, with the greatest inundations occurring during the Ordovician and early Carboniferous (Mississippian) periods.

Paleozoic rocks are widely distributed on all continents. Most are ofsedimentary origin, and many show evidence ofdeposition in or near shallow oceans. Among the more useful guide fossils for correlation aretrilobites (distinctive three-lobed marine arthropods), for Cambrian through Ordovician strata;graptolites (small colonial planktonic animals), for rocks dated from Ordovician through Silurian times;conodonts (primitive chordates with tooth-shapedfossil remains), for Ordovician to Permian rocks;ammonoids(widely distributed extinctmollusks resembling the modern pearlynautilus), for Devonian through Cretaceous strata; andfusulinids (single-celled amoeba-like organisms with complex shells), for rocks dating from the Carboniferous through the Permian Period.