Global reef recovery after the end-Ordovician extinction: evidence from late Aeronian coral–stromatoporoid reefs in South China

Abstract

After the end-Ordovician mass extinction, reef recovery (size and biotic diversity) took several million years. On the Upper Yangtze Platform, South China Block, the initial reef reconstruction episode is recorded in limestone of middle Aeronian age in northern Guizhou Province. By late Aeronian, reefs were widespread on the Yangtze carbonate platform, today represented by patch reefs cropping out in a 10-km² large area near Shuibatang, Tongzi County, where two stratigraphic intervals with reefs are recognized. Late Aeronian reefs constitute a complex and diverse reef community dominated by corals, and to a lesser extent stromatoporoids. They contain an accessory fauna of abundant bryozoans and crinoids and some brachiopods, trilobites, molluscs and calcimicrobes. These reefs correlate in time with similar reefs in Anticosti, Laurentia, palaeogeographically very distant from South China. Thus, there is good evidence that recovery and geographic expansion of reefs after the end-Ordovician extinction occur simultaneously in at least two continents.

Keywords::

• Silurian
• reefs
• China
• carbonates

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos 41072002 and 41221001). Comments by Maurice Tucker and Wolfgang Kiessling have improved the manuscript.