DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk26
title: Data from: The Fezouata Shale Formation biota is typical for the high latitudes of the early Ordovician – a quantitative approach

description: The Fezouata Shale Formation has dramatically impacted our understanding
 of early Ordovician marine ecosystems before the Great Ordovician
 Biodiversification Event (GOBE), thanks to the abundance and quality of
 exceptionally preserved animals within. Systematic work has noted that the
 shelly fossil sub-assemblages of the Fezouata Shale biota are typical of
 open-marine deposits from the Lower Ordovician, but no studies have tested
 the quantitative validity of this statement. We extracted 491 occurrences
 of recalcitrant fossil genera from the Paleobiology Database to
 reconstruct 31 sub-assemblages, to explore the paleoecology of the
 Fezouata Shale and other contemporary, high-latitude (66°S – 90°S)
 deposits from the Lower Ordovician (485.4 Ma – 470 Ma) and test the
 interpretation that the Fezouata Shale biota is typical for an Ordovician
 open-marine environment. Sørensen’s dissimilarity metrics and Wilcoxon
 tests indicate that the sub-assemblages of the Tremadocian-aged lower
 Fezouata Shale are approximately 20 percent more heterogenous than the
 Floian-aged upper Fezouata Shale. Dissimilarity metrics and visualization
 suggests that while the lower Fezouata and upper Fezouata share faunal
 components, the two sections have distinct faunas. We find that the faunal
 composition of the lower Fezouata Shale is comparable with other
 Tremadocian-aged sub-assemblages from high latitudes, suggesting that it
 is typical for an early Ordovician open-marine environment. We also find
 differences in faunal composition between Tremadocian- and Floian-aged
 deposits. Our results corroborate previous field-based and qualitative
 systematic studies that concluded that the shelly assemblages of the
 Fezouata Shale are comparable with those of other Lower Ordovician
 deposits from high latitudes. This establishes the first quantitative
 baseline for examining the composition and variability within the
 assemblages of the Fezouata Shale which will be key to future studies
 attempting to discern the degree to which it can inform our understanding
 of marine ecosystems just before the start of the GOBE.
description: Script 1: Rstudio Script used to process and manipulate datasets,
 and to create visualizations and run statistical tests. 
 Dataset 1: Early Ordovician occurence data downloaded from the
 paleobiological database (Early Ordovician PBDB).  Dataset 2: Taxa from Dataset 1 that were categorized as either Biomineralizing or Conventional. The sheets labeled "Notes and Legend for Excel Docu" outlines the symbols used to delineate classification of taxonomic levels examined in all other sheets. The sheet labeled "Phyla Level" pertains to which metazoan phyla are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Class Level" pertains to which metazoan classes are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Order Level" pertains to which metazoan orders are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Family Level" pertains to which metazoan families are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Genera Level" pertains to which metazoan genera are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. Any cells containing "NA" result from no information at that taxonomic level in the Paleobiological Database. Dataset 3: Presence-Absence Data for Conventional and Biomineralized Taxa within reconstructed time-averaged assemblages. 
description: # Data from: the Fezouata Shale Formation biota is typical for the high
 latitudes of the early Ordovician – a quantitative approach
 Dataset 1: Downloaded from
 the paleobiological database ([Early Ordovician
 PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/data1.2/occs/list.csv?datainfo&rowcount&max_ma=485.4&min_ma=443.8&show=class,classext,genus,coords,loc,paleoloc,strat,stratext,lith,lithext,env) "Early Ordovician PBDB")).  Data Provider/Source: The Paleobiology Database License URL: Data URL: ) This occurence data was downloaded from the Paleobiology Database on June 21st 2022, setting the maximum age to 485.4 and the minimum age to 443.8.  Dataset 2: Taxa from Dataset 1 that were categorized as either Biomineralizing or Conventional. The sheets labeled "Notes and Legend for Excel Docu" outlines the symbols used to delineate classification of taxonomic levels examined in all other sheets. The sheet labeled "Phyla Level" pertains to which metazoan phyla are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Class Level" pertains to which metazoan classes are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Order Level" pertains to which metazoan orders are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Family Level" pertains to which metazoan families are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. The sheet labeled "Genera Level" pertains to which metazoan genera are biomineralizing, conventional, etc. Any cells containing "NA" result from no information at that taxonomic level in the Paleobiological Database. Dataset 3: Presence-Absence Data for Conventional and Biomineralized Taxa within reconstructed time-averaged assemblages.  ## Description of the data and file structure Dataset 1 was used to create Dataset 2, and that information within was later used to create Dataset 3. ## Sharing/Access information Data was derived from the following sources: * Paleobiological Database ## Code/Software Script 1: Rstudio Script used to process and manipulate datasets, and to create visualizations and run statistical tests.