HIGH FIDELITY: THE DEEP TIME EARTH HISTORY REVOLUTION

Stratigraphic analysis, radiometric dating, digital imaging technology, high-resolution biostratigraphy, and the proliferation of chemostratigraphy during the past decade have rapidly advanced our ability to tell time in the rock record. These fields mostly have developed independently from one another, until recently, when it has become clear that the resolving power of multiple integrated chronostratigraphic and geochronologic tools can open entire new fields of inquiry for deep time Earth history research. By utilizing advances in radiometric age dating, stable isotope geochemistry, conodont, graptolite, chitinozoan, and ostracod biostratigraphy, geochemical fingerprinting of volcanic ash falls, sequence stratigraphy, and detailed stratigraphic observations from outcrop and core, we can now demonstrate that the Earth System was much more dynamic in the ancient past than was previously considered possible. Partly under the organization of the International Geoscience Programme (IGCP) Projects 410 and 503 during the previous decade, and the current IGCP Project 591 – The Early to Middle Paleozoic Revolution, the Ordovician and Silurian systems have been a source of cutting edge deep time Earth history research, largely due to the importance of lower Paleozoic petroleum source rocks in North Africa and Arabia, and are the focus of this presentation.