Life rebuilds after the ice
Marine ecosystems recover quickly, but the cast of characters has permanently changed.
- When
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Silurian, Paleozoic
Within a few million years of the end-Ordovician extinction, reefs, shelly faunas and plankton are re-established. Recovery is fast by the standards of later crises, but the composition shifts for good: giant nautiloids never regain dominance, trilobites continue a long slide, and the space that opens is filled by corals, stromatoporoids, crinoids and — most consequentially — jawed fish.