Rheic Ocean

One of the principal oceans of the Paleozoic, its sutures today stretch 10,000 km (6,200 mi) from Mexico to Turkey and its closure resulted in the assembly of the supercontinent Pangaea and the formation of the Variscan–Alleghenian–Ouachita orogenies.

[1][3] At the beginning of the Paleozoic Era, about 540 million years ago, most of the continental mass on Earth was clustered around the south pole as the paleocontinent Gondwana.

[5] The rift in its turn evolved into a mid-oceanic ridge that separated small continental fragments such as Avalonia and Carolina from the main Gondwanan land mass, leading to the formation of the Rheic Ocean in the Early Ordovician.

[7] The Prague Basin, which was an archipelago of humid volcanic islands in the Rheic Ocean on the outer edges of what was then the Gondwanan shelf during the Silurian, was a major hotspot of plant biodiversity during the early stages of the Silurian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution.

[8] It is believed that the closure of the Rheic, alongside the simultaneous onset of the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age, may have sparked the Carboniferous-Earliest Permian Biodiversification Event, an evolutionary radiation of marine life dominated by increase in species richness of fusulinids and brachiopods.