Minnesota PaleoWeb: Ordovician Gallery
Minnesota PaleoWeb > Ordovician Gallery
Photographed in the sections below represent a sampling of southeastern Minnesota during the
Ordovician era, approximately 500-440 million years ago. According to current models, what was
then North America was turned sideways, situated near the equator, and partly submerged under
shallow seas.
The fossils here are only a small subset of the animals that inhabited the shallow seas
covering what is now Minnesota. Soft-bodied species leave little or no trace over the eons.
Spectacular finds such as the Burgess Shale formation in Canada hint that much may be missing
from today's observable record. In Minnesota, tiny tooth- and horn-shaped fossils called
conodonts found in great numbers are one such indicator. Conodonts are small teeth and possibly
armor from these soft-bodied species that otherwise leave no trace. Preservation is a radically
uneven process, sure to bias our understanding of the past in favor of life -- and portions of
it -- that do leave traces of themselves.