Integration of Siluro-Devonian nautiloid biogeography and the paleogeography of Gondwana, Laurentia and peri- Gondwanide terranes

了解劳伦蒂亚超大陆相对于冈瓦那和冈瓦尼德周边地体的位置，如阿莫里卡、伊比利亚和阿瓦洛尼亚，对于正确理解和量化古生代期间的地球动力学事件至关重要。不幸的是，曾经是冈瓦那一部分的志留纪-泥盆纪大陆的古地磁数据库是不完整的，对古地理模型几乎没有提供约束。其结果是出现了几个对这一时期有非常不同解释的有争议的古地理模型。限制或测试这种重建的一种方法是通过与解释良好和健壮的生物地理模式进行比较。海洋无脊椎动物中的一大类--鹦鹉螺头足类--特别适合这项任务。鹦鹉螺类进化的很大一部分发生在志留纪-泥盆纪，生物地理数据库很大，只要做出合理的努力，就可以得到更好的改善，分析技术可以提供极高质量的模式，现在已知鹦鹉螺头足类的空间分布特别好地受到传播障碍的控制，这种障碍很容易用适当的方法识别。

Knowledge of the posotion of the supercontinent of Laurentia with respect to Gondwana and peri-Gondwanide terranes, such as Armorica, Iberia and Avalonia, is of paramount importance for the proper understanding and quantification of geodynamic events during the Paleozoic. Unfortunately, the paleomagnetic database for the Silurian-Devonian of continents once part of Gondwana is incomplete and provides few constraints on paleogeographic models. The result has been the appearance of several controversial paleogeographic models with very different interpretations for this period. One means of constraining or testing such reconstructions is through comparison with well interpreted and robust biogeographic patterns. One major group of marine invertebrates, the nautiloid cephalopods, is particularly well suited to this task. A significant portion of nautiloid evolution occurred during the Silurian-Devonian, the biogeographic database is large and can be made much better with reasonable effort, analytical techniques are available to provide patterns of exceptional quality, and the spatial distributions of nautiloid cephalopods are now known to have been particularly well controlled by barriers to dispersal of the magnitude easily recognized with proper methods.