Toward a unified and refined Ordovician stratigraphy for the western Yangtze region, South China

Abstract

Strata equivalent to the majority of the Ordovician shallow-water sediments in South China occur in the western Yangtze region (present-day southwestern Sichuan and northeastern Yunnan, Southwest China), but remain to be properly documented largely due to their inaccessibility. Our research in the past decade has led to the recognition of spatial and temporal patterns, and hence a substantial stratigraphic revision of these rocks, with part of the results having been published in a series of papers. Here, we outline a unified and refined Ordovician stratigraphy of the region built chiefly on a summary of these new data, presenting a robust timeframe for exploring the environmental and biotic events during the Ordovician on a basin-wide scale in South China.