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The Ordovician in Alabama, US

Ordovician in Alabama map

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Ordovician Fossils

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Paleontology and geology

During the Ordovician, most of the land that would become Alabama lay beneath a warm, tropical sea teeming with brachiopods, clams, trilobites, and other marine life. Rocks formed from sediments deposited on this sea floor are now exposed along the Tennessee border in the north-central part of the state.

A mountain-building event (Taconic Orogeny) occurred in the middle Ordovician. Layers of ash from associated volcanic activity and sediments eroding off the rising mountains were periodically deposited into the sea. Melting caused by the subduction of the crust during this orogeny produced massive plutons of granite-type rock. Although not shown on this map, these granitic rocks are now exposed at the surface across Alabama’s Piedmont Province in the east-central part of the state.

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Image Collections (showing 1 of 1 listings)

Graptolites: Graptolites (literally translated "writing on rock") are an extinct group of Paleozoic colonial organisms, most often found as thin carbonized films in various shales or limestones from the Cambrian to the Carboniferous. Following are graptolites collected from the Athens Shale formation (Ordovician age) near Montevalo, Alabama.

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