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Silurian-Devonian Biogeography |
Department of Paleobiology, E-308 National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA
Silurian and Early Devonian ostracode associations in North America represent at least three ecotypes, a leperditicopid association, a large beyrichiacean association, a mixed association, and possibly a fourth, spinose podocopid association, or Thuringian ecotype. Comparison of the large beyrichiacean association and mixed association ecotypes indicates the presence of three informal ostracode provinces, the Appohimchi, Baltic-British and Cordilleran, which remained relatively constant in geographical position throughout the Silurian and Early Devonian. Plotting the provinces on palaeogeographic maps suggests that temperature was not an important factor in delimiting the provinces, and land barriers, or possibly deep-water troughs as barriers, were the cause of provincial development. Benthic ostracodes differed from other benthic invertebrates such as brachiopods and corals in developing provincialism in the late Llandovery and having it start to decline in the Pragian through the Emsian.
