The Ordovician in Tennessee, US

Paleontology and geology

Ordovician sedimentary rocks cover a large portion of central Tennessee, in an area called the Nashville Dome. These rocks are primarily limestones deposited in the warm, shallow sea that covered the state during this time. Fossils of brachiopods, bryozoans, and crinoids are abundant in these rocks. Other Ordovician fossils in Tennessee include conodonts, trilobites, bivalves, sponges, and unusual echinoderms such as edrioasteroids. In the middle and later parts of the Ordovician, mountain building to the east (the Taconic Orogeny) caused the edge of the continent to warp downward into a deep-water basin. Sediments eroding off the rising mountains were carried westward into the sea, eventually filling the basin and pushing the shoreline toward the west.