Latest Ordovician and earliest Silurian tabulate corals of South China

Abstract

Latest Ordovician and earliest Silurian tabulate corals of the South China paleoplate are summarized at the generic level. In contrast to the abundant late Katian records, there is no record of tabulate corals in the early–middle Hirnantian rocks in South China, lithostratigraphically represented by the Kuanyinchiao Formation and its equivalents. The tabulate fauna from the late Hirnantian and the earliest Silurian rocks of South China is characterized by the occurrence of three cosmopolitan genera: Paleofavosites, Propora and Halysites. They differ morphologically from the pre-Hirnantian tabulate corals of South China. Such a long-ranging and low-diversity tabulate coral fauna also indicates a warm but somewhat unfavorable living environment during the survival interval after the second pulse of the end-Ordovician mass extinction.

Keywords::

• tabulate corals
• latest Ordovician
• earliest Silurian
• South China

Acknowledgements

Rong Jiayu, Wang Yi, Huang Bing and Wu Rongchang provided help in the field. Chen Xu and Zhou Zhiyi helped to identify the associated graptolites and trilobites, respectively. Many thanks to the two reviewers, Mari-Ann Mötus and Mikael Calner, for providing constructive suggestions. Jisuo Jin from Western University (Canada) kindly helped us polishing the English of our manuscript. Financial supports for this study are from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41221001, 41290260 and J1210006) and the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy. This article is a contribution to the IGCP Project 591 – The Early to Middle Paleozoic Revolution.