24 Facts About Devonian period

The arthropod groups of myriapods, arachnids and hexapods became well-established early on in this Devonian period, after having started their expansion to land at least from the Ordovician Devonian period.

Devonian period palaeogeography was dominated by the supercontinent of Gondwana to the south, the small continent of Siberia to the north, and the medium-sized continent of Laurussia to the east.

The Devonian period experienced several major mountain-building events as Laurussia and Gondwana approached; these include the Acadian Orogeny in North America and the beginning of the Variscan Orogeny in Europe.

The Great Devonian Controversy was a long period of vigorous argument and counter-argument between the main protagonists of Roderick Murchison with Adam Sedgwick against Henry De la Beche supported by George Bellas Greenough.

In nineteenth-century texts the Devonian period has been called the "Old Red Age", after the red and brown terrestrial deposits known in the United Kingdom as the Old Red Sandstone in which early fossil discoveries were found.

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Devonian period has erroneously been characterised as a "greenhouse age", due to sampling bias: most of the early Devonian period-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.

In fact the climate in the Devonian period differed greatly during its epochs and between geographic regions.

Ammonoids during this time Devonian period were simple and differed little from their nautiloid counterparts.

Middle Devonian period comprised two subdivisions: first the Eifelian, which then gave way to the Givetian.

Devonian period world involved many continents and ocean basins of various sizes.

The Devonian Period was a time of great tectonic activity, as the major continents of Laurussia and Gondwana drew closer together.

The tectonic effects of this collision continued into the Devonian period, producing a string of mountain ranges along the southeastern coast of the continent.

Devonian period reefs extended along the southeast edge of Laurussia, a coastline now corresponding to southern England, Belgium, and other mid-latitude areas of Europe.

The northwestern edge of Gondwana was an active margin for much of the Devonian period, and saw the accretion of many smaller land masses and island arcs.

Nevertheless, they remained close enough to Gondwana that their Devonian period fossils were more closely related to Australian species than to north Asian species.

At the beginning of the Devonian, Siberia was inverted relative to its modern orientation, but later in the period it moved northwards and began to twist clockwise, though it was still nowhere near its modern location.

Siberia approached the eastern edge of Laurussia as the Devonian period progressed, but it was still separated by a seaway, the Ural Ocean.

Rheic Ocean, which separated Laurussia from Gondwana, was wide at the start of the Devonian period, having formed after the drift of Avalonia away from Gondwana.

However, it steadily shrunk as the Devonian period continued, as the two major continents approached near the equator in the early stages of the assembling of Pangaea.

The great diversity of fish around at the time has led to the Devonian period being given the name "The Age of Fish" in popular culture.

Devonian period saw significant expansion in 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 labelled the Devonian period Nekton Revolution by many researchers.

Many Early Devonian period plants did not have true roots or leaves like extant plants although vascular tissue is observed in many of those plants.

Late Devonian period extinction is not a single event, but rather is a series of pulsed extinctions at the Givetian-Frasnian boundary, the Frasnian-Famennian boundary, and the Devonian period-Carboniferous boundary.

Reasons for the Late Devonian period extinctions are still unknown, and all explanations remain speculative.