What was the Devonian period like?
Devonian Period, fourth division of the Paleozoic Era of geologic time, spanning an interval from about 416 million to 359 million years before present, and named for Devonshire, England, where the sedimentary rocks of that period were first studied in the 1830s. The Devonian is preceded by the Silurian Period and followed by the Carboniferous Period. The ancient landmasses of North America and Europe straddled the equator at this time, while the African and South American portions of Gondwanaland, the supercontinent that would eventually form the modern southern continents, were centered over the South Pole. The principal geologic event of the Devonian Period was a three-way collision between the landmasses of North America, Eurasia, and Gondwanaland. Compression generated by this collision made mountains by folding the thick sections of sedimentary strata that had accumulated in troughs of crustal weakness called geosynclines. See also Plate Tectonics. This Devonian episode of mounta
Hi there The Devonian period was known as the Age of Fishes, and the continents also came together in what today we term Gondwanaland, and other landmasses were located in the equatorial regions. Siberia was separated from Europe by a broad ocean, and North America and Europe were joined. So the world was very different type of place, most of the surface was under water. Many types of primitive marine and freshwater fish appeared and proliferated, Ferns and primitive plants diversified and created the first forests. Red-colored sediments, generated when North America collided with Europe, give the Devonian its name, as these distinguishing rocks were first studied in Devon, England. The Devonian, part of the Paleozoic era spawned a remarkable variety of fish. The most formidable of them were the armored placoderms, a group that first appeared during the Silurian with powerful jaws lined with bladelike plates that acted as teeth. Early placoderms fed on mollusks and other invertebrates,
Our luxury planet, teeming with life, developed slowly through billions of years. The changes were made in pulses, such as the rise and fall of mountains and sea level. The pauses between these dramatic changes divide the long story in five eras, each lasting hundreds of millions of years. The series of events in each era are divided into periods, each lasting ten of millions of years. The Devonian Period is the third chapter in the Paleozoic Era of earth’s history. It began quietly some 300 million years ago and lasted 60 million years. In North America, the lofty mountains of the west and the east were still unborn. There were young mountains and volcanos in Alaska and along the north eastern shores and, as the period closed the northern arm of the Appalachians started to poke up its head. Slowly, slowly the sea invaded the flat central area and then retreated. Vast beds of sedimentary rocks were formed by weathering and the retreating water, Much of New York was buried under muddy d
