Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event
The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), was an evolutionary radiation of animal life throughout the Ordovician period, 40 million years after the Cambrian explosion, whereby the distinctive Cambrian fauna fizzled out to be replaced with a Paleozoic fauna rich in suspension feeder and pelagic animals.
Possible line of meteors (on the modern globe) associated with the Middle Ordovician meteor event 467.5±0.28 million years ago. Although this is suggestive of a single large meteorite shower, the exact alignment of continental plates 470 million years ago is unknown and the exact timing of meteors is also unknown.
Atrypid brachiopods (Zygospira modesta) preserved in their original positions on a trepostome bryozoan; Cincinnatian (Upper Ordovician) of southeastern Indiana.
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia, With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Animals form a clade, meaning that they arose from a single common ancestor.
Sexual reproduction is nearly universal in animals, such as these dragonflies.
Predators, such as this ultramarine flycatcher (Ficedula superciliaris), feed on other animals.
Hydrothermal vent mussels and shrimps
The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived.
