Description: Late Ordovician fossils, including the distinctive Hirnantia brachiopod Fauna, have been found in Lower Palaeozoic successions in Istanbul and Bolu (Yigilca), western Pontides, NW Turkey. The Middle Ordovician (Sandbian) faunas belong to the cooler-water Mediterranean Province, and they are followed by Katian brachiopods including Sulevorthis , Nicolella , Hesperorthis , Glyptorthis , Saukrodictya and Kullervo and ostracods such as Piretella , Eochilina and Klimphores , which represent deposition in warmer waters; however, the Mediterranean Province usually cooler-water brachiopods Drabovia and Leptestiina also occur. The Pendik Formation includes thin bryozoan-rich limestones which probably represent the Boda Global Warming Event. The overlying turbidites contain a Hirnantia Fauna, developed within a brachiopod–diplograptid association. Above them there are characteristic Llandovery (Rhuddanian–Aeronian) brachiopods, such as Leangella , Eoplectodonta , Stricklandia and Hindella with the corals Halysites , Paleofavosites and Streptelasma . In the Bolu area, Katian brachiopods such as Mcewanella , Dalmanella , Glyptorthis , Christiania , Oligorhynchia , Nicolella , Howellites and Drabovinella also occur, but there the overlying Hirnantia Fauna is developed within a Hirnantia – Mucronaspis association. The fauna and sediments indicate that the western Pontides were not very cold during the latest Ordovician. Despite Turkey being placed in higher latitudes by previous authors, it seems more probable that the Pontides were at somewhat lower palaeolatitudes, perhaps at about 40°S in those times; however, the precise palaeogeographical position of the terrane remains uncertain: there are no Hirnantian glaciogenic rocks there, such as are found in the Taurides of southern Turkey.

Description: The Late Ordovician equatorial zone, like the zone today, had few hurricane-grade storms within 10° of the equator, as emphasized by the preservation of massive-bedded Thalassinoides ichnofacies in a trans-Laurentian belt more than 6000 km long, from the southwestern United States to North Greenland. That belt also includes nonamalgamated shell beds dominated by the brachiopod Proconchidium , which would not have been preserved after hurricane-grade storms. The belt lacks such storm-related sedimentary features as rip-up clasts, hummocky cross-stratification, or large channels. In contrast, other contemporaneous Laurentian Thalassinoides facies and shell beds on either side of the belt have been disturbed by severe storms below fair-weather wave base. The position of the biofacies-defined equatorial belt coincides with the Late Ordovician equator deduced from paleomagnetic data from Laurentia, thus providing both a high-precision equatorial location and an independent test of the geocentric axial dipole hypothesis for that time.

Description: Earth scientists have had no direct way of calculating longitudes for times before those of the oldest hotspot track eruption sites in the Cretaceous (~ 130 Myr ago). For earlier times palaeomagnetic data constrain only ancient latitudes and continental rotations. We have recently devised a hybrid plate motion reference frame that permits the calculation of longitude back to Pangean assembly at ~ 320 Ma. This reference frame, here corrected for True Polar Wander (TPW), places most reconstructed Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) of the past 300 Myr radially above the edges of the Large Low Shear wave Velocity Provinces (LLSVPs) in Earth's lowermost mantle. This remarkable correlation between surface and deep mantle features, which is also discernible for all hotspots with a deep-plume origin, provides a new way of reconstructing the original positions of LIP sites, and therefore the position of continents whose longitudes have hitherto been unknown. We place the 258 Ma Emeishan LIP eruption of South China at 4°N and 140°E, in that way constraining the width and the geometry of the Palaeotethys Ocean during the Late Permian. If LLSVPs have remained stable for even longer and TPW has been small, we can, under these assumptions, also restore Siberia and Gondwana longitudinally for Late Devonian (~ 360 Ma) and Late Cambrian (~ 510 Ma) times.

Description: Volume 1 focuses on the evolution of Central Europe from the Precambrian to the Permian, a dynamic period which traces the formation of Central Europe from a series of microcontinents that separated from Gondwana through to the creation of Pangaea. Separate summary chapters on the Cadomian, Caledonian and Variscan orogenic events as well as on Palaeozoic magmatism provide an overview of the tectonic and magmatic evolution of the region. These descriptions sometimes extend beyond the borders of Central Europe to take in the Scottish and Irish Caledonides as well as the Palaeozoic successions in the Baltic region.