3 min read During the Ordovician period, part of the Paleozoic era ... The archaic sponge reef-dwellers of the Cambrian gave way to bryozoans—tiny, group-living animals that built coral-like ...

Eric Monceret and Sylvie Monceret-Goujon found one of the world’s richest and most biodiverse fossil sites from the Lower Ordovician period (488-444 million years ago) in southern France.

Previous reef-builders such as bryozoans were joined by corals and ... over the South Pole but the vast icecaps of the late Ordovician period melted almost to nothing. Sediments formed from ...