LIFE DURING THE DEVONIAN PERIOD or THE AGE OF FISHES
Brachiopods dominated the sea during the Devonian period. Brachiopods called the spiriferids built huge reefs in the shallow seas.
The Devonian period brought two major animal groups to the land. The first land living vertaebrates, known as tetrapods, and terrestrial arthopods appeared duiring this period. Wingless insects and the very beginning arachnids.
A brachiopod from the Devonian period
The Devonian period also became known as The Age of Fishes because of the enormous variety of fish that came to be during this time. A fish called Tiktaalik, discovered in 2004, seemed to be a key organism in linking ancestry from fish to land walking vertebrates.
A Dunkleosteos which was ten meters long
PLANTS of the devonian
During the Devonian period plants began to spread to dry lands from there wetland homes where they has resided for a long time. The very first forests had arisen and soon ferns and seed plants appeared. Although the spread of wetland plants to dryland was an essential breakthrough, 70 percent of marine species and other organisms experienced a mass extinction. This extinction seemed to evade the new plants and thus ended the Devonian period.
Global cooling by the re-glaciation of Gondwana and an asteroid impact are two theories to the mass extiction that ended the Devonian period.
Fossils
The are many different fossils from the Devonian period in New York. Apart from birds, dinosaurs, and mammals, all of the animal types listed on the New York Earth Science Reference Table can be found from the Devonian period.
A Platyceras from the Devonian period. Found in Devonian limestone.
Specific fossils found in New York from the Devonian period:
Phacops
Hexameroceras
Manticoceras
Stylonurus
Aneurophyton
Naples tree
Bothriolepis
Pleurodictyum
Platyceras
Mucrospirifer