From about 470 million years ago, the Middle Ordovician period witnessed a rapid increase in biodiversity. This explosion in numbers of species is almost perfectly contemporaneous with an increased frequency of meteorite impacts.
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Paris, F. Meteoritic spur to life?. Nature Geosci 1, 18–19 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo.2007.63
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo.2007.63
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