A long-term record of early to mid-Paleozoic marine redox change.

The extent to which Paleozoic oceans differed from Neoproterozoic oceans and the causal relationship between biological evolution and changing environmental conditions are heavily debated. Here, we report a nearly continuous record of seafloor redox change from the deep-water upper Cambrian to Middle Devonian Road River Group of Yukon, Canada. Bottom waters were largely anoxic in the Richardson trough during the entirety of Road River Group deposition, while independent evidence from iron speciation and Mo/U ratios show that the biogeochemical nature of anoxia changed through time. Both in Yukon and globally, Ordovician through Early Devonian anoxic waters were broadly ferruginous (nonsulfidic), with a transition toward more euxinic (sulfidic) conditions in the mid-Early Devonian (Pragian), coincident with the early diversification of vascular plants and disappearance of graptolites. This ~80-million-year interval of the Paleozoic characterized by widespread ferruginous bottom waters represents a persistence of Neoproterozoic-like marine redox conditions well into the Phanerozoic.

Exceptionally preserved 450-million-year-old ordovician ostracods with brood care.

Ostracod crustaceans are the most abundant fossil arthropods and are characterized by a long stratigraphic range. However, their soft parts are very rarely preserved, and the presence of ostracods in rocks older than the Silurian period [1-5] was hitherto based on the occurrence of their supposed shells. Pyritized ostracods that preserve limbs and in situ embryos, including an egg within an ovary and possible hatched individuals, are here described from rocks of the Upper Ordovician Katian Stage Lorraine Group of New York State, including examples from the famous Beecher's Trilobite Bed [6, 7]. This discovery extends our knowledge of the paleobiology of ostracods by some 25 million years and provides the first unequivocal demonstration of ostracods in the Ordovician period, including the oldest known myodocope, Luprisca incuba gen. et sp. nov. It also provides conclusive evidence of a developmental brood-care strategy conserved within Ostracoda for at least 450 million years.

A pyritized polychaete from the Devonian of Ontario.

A polychaete from the Middle Devonian Arkona Shale at Hungry Hollow, Arkona, Ontario is preserved in three dimensions in pyrite. The prostomium bears a single median antenna, a pair of lateral antennae and a pair of ventral palps. It is assumed to be fused to a reduced peristomium. The anteriormost three pairs of trunk appendages are modified as tentacular cirri, the third long and biramous. The remainder of the finely annulated trunk bears at least 21 similar biramous parapodia, some of which preserve evidence of chaetae. The postsegmental pygidium is very small and may bear up to two pairs of cirri. The polychaete, Arkonips topororum, falls within the Palpata, Aciculata, among the crown group Phyllodocida. Its remarkable preservation highlights the potential of the Arkona Shale to yield other examples of soft-tissue preservation.