A global view on the Ordovician stratigraphy of south-eastern Europe

The Ordovician documented in south-eastern Europe reflects different sedimentary environments, from shallow water to basin, belonging to diverse palaeogeographical domains. Some of these geological sectors and their palaeontological content have been well described for a long time, like the Carnic Alps, that represent one of the most continuous Palaeozoic sequence in the world. For some other areas, the quality of the data is variable and the knowledge is less detailed, sometimes with lithostratigraphic units still to be formalized, also reflecting the fragmentary nature of the outcrops. The Ordovician stratigraphy of diverse successions of south-eastern Europe has been herein revised and integrated with new data in the attempt of detecting a global scenario for this critical time interval in the evolution of life.