Understanding the theatre of terrestrialization: Silurian-Devonian sedimentary landscapes and continental ecosystems
type: CreativeWork
description: The colonization of subaerial and non-marine landscapes (“terrestrialization”) by animals and plants was a defining and irreversible innovation during the co-evolution of Earth and its biosphere. Its timing, estimated through ichnological evidence, suggests Cambro-Ordovician excursions were followed by Siluro-Devonian colonization of fully non-marine habitats. Our ichnological understanding of such events can sometimes be biased to particular geographic regions: for example, the known record of terrestrialization is heavily biased to ichnological and sedimentological data from Europe and North America. This does not only reflect a historical bias in study locations, but also the exposure of rocks of this age: the extensive heterolithic red-bed successions of the ‘Catskill Delta’ and ‘Old Red Sandstone’. These strata archive a huge amount of ichnological information but they may not be globally representative because they were almost unanimously deposited in basins bordering the Caledonide/Acadian mountain belts, under warm climates, near the palaeo-equator; and dominated by fine grained continental deposits, representing muddy coastal plains and alluvial floodplains. Less well studied, a suite of similar aged strata occurs across the modern continent of Australia, within a variety of palaeoenvironmental sedimentary facies. Among these, the heterolithic Grampians Group, Victoria, is arguably most akin to ‘Old Red Sandstone’-type facies, recording a range of offshore to continental depositional settings. However, other locations are dominated by coarser (sandstone-dominated) strata that are rare in Euramerican settings, including estuarine facies of the Tumblagooda Sandstone, Western Australia, and aeolian facies of the Mereenie Sandstone, Northern Territory. This thesis presents new field data comparing the sedimentology and ichnology of these Australian sections with other original data from successions in Europe and North America, to present a more global perspecti…
abstract: The colonization of subaerial and non-marine landscapes (“terrestrialization”) by animals and plants was a defining and irreversible innovation during the co-evolution of Earth and its biosphere. Its timing, estimated through ichnological evidence, suggests Cambro-Ordovician excursions were followed by Siluro-Devonian colonization of fully non-marine habitats. Our ichnological understanding of such events can sometimes be biased to particular geographic regions: for example, the known record of terrestrialization is heavily biased to ichnological and sedimentological data from Europe and North America. This does not only reflect a historical bias in study locations, but also the exposure of rocks of this age: the extensive heterolithic red-bed successions of the ‘Catskill Delta’ and ‘Old Red Sandstone’. These strata archive a huge amount of ichnological information but they may not be globally representative because they were almost unanimously deposited in basins bordering the Caledonide/Acadian mountain belts, under warm climates, near the palaeo-equator; and dominated by fine grained continental deposits, representing muddy coastal plains and alluvial floodplains. Less well studied, a suite of similar aged strata occurs across the modern continent of Australia, within a variety of palaeoenvironmental sedimentary facies. Among these, the heterolithic Grampians Group, Victoria, is arguably most akin to ‘Old Red Sandstone’-type facies, recording a range of offshore to continental depositional settings. However, other locations are dominated by coarser (sandstone-dominated) strata that are rare in Euramerican settings, including estuarine facies of the Tumblagooda Sandstone, Western Australia, and aeolian facies of the Mereenie Sandstone, Northern Territory. This thesis presents new field data comparing the sedimentology and ichnology of these Australian sections with other original data from successions in Europe and North America, to present a more global perspecti…
author: Shillito, Anthony
language: eng
keywords: trace fossil, ichnology, marine, non-marine, sedimentology, palaeoecology, Palaeozoic, Tumblagooda, Gondwana
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/999d257c-c3bc-4d25-aa03-4747ed5cdf4d/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2019-10-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:11Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.53700