Concluding Ordovician Workshop in Lyon

After two years apart, (some) members of IGCP 653 were able to gather in person for a final workshop on November 29-30 at Lyon University in France.  The workshop has hosted jointly by IGCP 653, 735, and the Ordovician Subcommission and beautifully organized by Bertrand Lebevre and Thomas Servais. We were fortunate to gather right before travel became restricted related to the emergence of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.  The Ordovician Workshop included twenty eight in-person participants from France, Switzerland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  Four additional participants from the UK, Sweden, and Morocco joined some sessions via Zoom.

The meeting was a productive environment featuring presentations from both junior and senior Ordovician workers accompanied by Lyon’s famous gastronomy and friendly environment. Sessions included updates on the Fezouata Biota in a session dedicated to the late Bernard Pettit, evolution of land plants, Ordovician diversification patterns, with a key emphasis on regional records, and synthetic overview of key tools such as astrochonology, global chemical cycles, and model-based approaches.  Many new ideas and animated conservations and discussions occurred, and as always, we wished we had more time to discuss the exciting events of the Ordovician Period.

Although IGCP 653 is now closed, our community certainly has a wonderful pathway going forward for continued discussion, discovery, and insights with the IGCP 735 project.

IGCP 653 News

Dear members of IGCP 653,

We are in our final year (on extended term) and in our last months of the project IGCP 653. 

To conclude the project, we have organized a workshop in Lyon, France. This workshop will take place November 29th-30th, 2021. We expect to have about 30 scientists joining, and the meeting will be designed to allow extensive discussion, in particular to summarize IGCP 653 and to focus on the future perspectives. 

We should be able to sponsor a number of young (student) researchers and a few scientists from developing countries to attend the workshop.  If you wish (and are able) to attend, please contact, as soon as possible the organisers (Thomas Servais and Bertrand LeFebevre). Circular here: http://www.igcp653.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Lyon-workshop.pdf

The Lille closing meeting of IGCP 653 “The Ordovician of the World” was a huge success, with about 300 participants attending. We are especially happy to have been able to include so many colleagues from all over the world. During the four days of the meeting, we were between 70 and 140 attendants during the different sessions. We thank all IGCP 653 members to have made this a great success! 

During the online meeting, we announced you that the pre- and post-conference excursions (to Wales/Welsh Borderland and Belgium/France) of the Lille closing meeting in September 2021 had to be postponed to May-June 2022. However, we now have to cancel these events also in spring 2022 due to continuing international travel restrictions due to to COVID. We are sorry about that, because a few of you wanted to attend the excursions. We hope to offer new dates for these trips in the future and will negotiate with the IGCP 735 leaders about a future schedule for these field trips. 

Best regards,
Thomas Servais on behalf of all IGCP 653 leaders

Annual meeting (online), Sept. 2021 Conference Programme

Dear all, 

As you know, the final meeting of IGCP 653 (2016-2020 + 2021 on extended term) and the opening meeting of IGCP 735 (2021-2025) will take place on September 13th-16th, 2021.   

Deadline for submission of abstracts was July 30th (last week), and the organizers managed to schedule a programme including 12 sessions, three for each day, with 12 keynote speakers, 36 regular talks, and 25 short (3 + 2 minutes) lightning talks, covering many aspects of Ordovician palaeontology and geology.   

The provisional program is now available here: CONFERENCE PROGRAM.   

Please, note that we organize an official ‘business meeting’ of IGCP 653, that will take place on Monday, 15th, at 2.10 pm (Paris time), at the end of Session 2. This timing should allow most Ordovician workers to participate.   

We hope that you will be able to join. If you did not register yet to the annual meeting, please, join us (registration is free)! Register here: ONLINE REGISTRATION LINK or by completing the form: REGISTRATION VIA EMAIL

More information can be found on the conference website: https://lille2021.wordpress.com

Looking forward to seeing you at the Lille online meeting,  

With best wishes,
Ordovician of the World co-organizers

Reminder: deadline for oral presentations at joint IGCP 653-735 annual (virtual) meeting

Dear all, 

This short post is to remind you that this Friday (July, 16th) is the deadline to apply for oral presentations at the joint IGCP 653735 annual (virtual) meeting in Lille (see links below). Registration is free, but compulsory, if you are willing to participate. Deadline for abstract submission is July, 30th, but only regularly registered participants can submit their abstracts. If you are simply willing to attend this meeting (and not participate to it), the deadline for registration is September, 10th.  

Important dates:
Application deadline for all presentations: 16th July 2021
Abstract submission deadline: 30th July 2021
Submission deadline of lightning presentation materials: 30th August 2021
Application of participation deadline (for audience without presentation): 10th September 2021
Conference Days: 13th to 16th September 2021

Register for FREE online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/igcp-653735-virtual-conference-the-ordovician-of-the-world-registration-153354598733

In case of problems with the online registration, please fill in this form and send it to the congress organizers at igcp653.735.lille2021@gmail.com

For additional information, visit the conference websitehttps://lille2021.wordpress.com/ or the first circular. 

We look forward to your participation in the conference!

–Conference organizers

Workshop in Lyon

The co-leaders of IGCP 653-735 and some voting members of the Subcommission on Ordovician Stratigraphy will meet for a workshop at Lyon, France, from November 28th to December 1st, 2021, with the following provisional programme: 
Sunday, November 28th: arrival of participants
Monday, November 29th: scientific meeting and discussion: Results of IGCP 653
Tuesday, November 30th: scientific meeting and discussion: Perspectives of IGCP 653 and objectives of IGCP 735
Wednesday, December 1st: departure
All participants of IGCP 653 and 735 are welcome. Please, contact the co-leaders if you are interested!

Lille Online 2021: Registration is live!

Dear all, 

Registration for the Lille 2021 ‘Ordovician of the World’ is live. This meeting will bring together the global Ordovician community as the Absolutely final meeting of IGCP 653 which will be held in conjunction with the new Ordovician-focused IGCP 735

The online Lille meeting will take place via Zoom over four days: Monday 13th to Thursday 16th, September 2021.  Registration is FREE, but compulsory to receive the Zoom links each day.  

Presenters should register by July 16th and other attendees must register by September 10th.  Abstracts are due by July 30th.

Register for FREE online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/igcp-653735-virtual-conference-the-ordovician-of-the-world-registration-153354598733

In case of problems with the online registration, please fill in this form and send it to the congress organizers at igcp653.735.lille2021@gmail.com

For additional information, visit the conference websitehttps://lille2021.wordpress.com/ or the first circular. 

–Thomas Servais and rest of the conference organizers

Lille Online 2021: Registration open! Website and first circular now available

Dear all, 

We are delighted to now share with you the first circular and website for the Absolutely final meeting of IGCP 653 which will be held in conjunction with the new Ordovician-focused IGCP 735 as an online zoom conference.

The online Lille meeting will take place over four days: Monday 13th to Thursday 16th, September 2021.

The main topic of the Lille 2021 meeting is the ‘Ordovician of the World.

Several online keynote lectures as well as regular talks and short ‘Lightning’ talks will be scheduled, with sessions in different time zones, to cover most parts of the world.

In addition to the abstract volume, we also plan to produce a special issue in an international journal. Please, indicate your interest if you wish to submit a conference paper.

We invite all contributions on all aspects of Ordovician palaeontology and geology!The first circular is here: https://lille2021.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/first-circular-comined.pdf 

The conference website is here: https://lille2021.wordpress.com/

Like our 2020 annual  meeting, registration is FREE, but required to receive the zoom links each day.  Online registration is here with a email registration option here for those for whom the online system is not a good option. 

–Thomas Servais and rest of the conference organizers

Absolutely final meeting + IGCP 735 successor project!

Hello IGCP 653 member,

We hope that you are all in good health during this difficult period, which has now been with us for over a year.

As you know, IGCP 653 was scheduled from 2016 and 2020. For the final year, 2020, several meetings were planned, but all were cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the official closing congress was organized in Copenhagen, Denmark, although the meeting was entirely virtual.

AD 2021 was supposed to be ‘on extended term’ (OET, without finance from the UNESCO), with an ‘absolutely final meeting’ in Lille, France, and several other events (see our website). With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it is now also uncertain if we will be able to organise any meeting in 2021 with the physical presence of IGCP 653 participants.

The Lille meeting was scheduled for September 10th – 20th, 2021, with a pre-congress field excursion to Belgium and France (September 10th-12th), indoor sessions (September 13th-15th), and a post-congress field excursion to Wales and the Welsh Borderlands, UK (September 16th-20th). The excursions will most probably be postponed (in the next few months), but the indoor sessions will occur, but possibly also mostly as a virtual meeting. Please, keep these dates in your diaries, because we will definitely organise at least a virtual congress, that will allow all of you to present your (final) results of the project IGCP 653.

Very soon, we will inform you about the context of the congress, with deadlines, and details for abstract submission, etc. Registration for the online meeting is free, and we hope to be able to organize a congress that will be as successful as the virtual Copenhagen meeting in September 2020.

The project IGCP 653 is thus ‘virtually’ over! However, we are very happy to announce that a ‘successor project’ has just been accepted by UNESCO.

The new IGCP  project on the Ordovician, entitled ‘Rocks and the Rise of Ordovician Life’ (‘Rocks n’ROL’) was submitted last October (https://rocksnrol.wordpress.com/). The eight co-leaders (Bertrand LEFEBVRE, France; Yves CANDELA, UK; Khadija EL HARIRI, Morocco; Mansoureh GHOBADIPOUR, Iran; Elena RAEVSKAYA, Russia; Oive TINN, Estonia; Beatriz WAISFELD, Argentina; Wenhui WANG, China) are delighted to inform you that this new IGCP  has been officially accepted by the IGCP board at UNESCO, and it will run from 2021 to 2025 (https://en.unesco.org/news/18-new-projects-join-international-geoscience-programme-2021).

The new project number is 735, so after several previous International Geoscience Projects dedicated to the Ordovician (n°410, n°503, n°653) Ordovician research now continues in the frame of the new project IGCP n°735 Rocks n’ROL!

The official opening meeting of the new 5-year project IGCP 735 will be organized together with the absolutely final meeting of IGCP 653 in September 2021. This will enable a smooth transition between the two projects.

Therefore, please, note in your agenda the closing meeting of IGCP 653 that will serve also as the opening meeting of IGCP 735: September 13th-15th, 2021!

Looking forward to meeting you soon at conferences, virtual meetings, workshops or in the field,

Thomas Servais and the co-leaders of IGCP 653

Bertrand Lefebvre and the co-leaders of IGCP 735

IGCP 653 Virtual Meeting Wrap-up

THANK YOU to everyone who participated in Zooming in on the GOBE and helped to make is such a successful conference!  We had over 200 registrants from 29 countries join in the meeting. This has been a truly global meeting!

Presentations by 45 speakers covered topics from paleobiology to geochemistry and all aspects of the Ordovician (and adjacent time intervals).  It was a wonderful week of sharing our science, ideas, and connecting with colleagues.

You can now watch and rewatch the sessions from the conference on the IGCP Project 653 YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUPWf2B2jdXqmAsY2t9DFrg 

We look forward to seeing you again soon online or in-person!

Annual Meeting of IGCP 653: Zooming in on the GOBE

The IGCP Project 653 Virtual Conference kicks off today! More than 180 scientists from 25 countries have registered to join the conference. We are very excited to offer this platform to bring our global community together to connect and share our science.

Conference overview:

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Times are provided as UTC+0 – you can determine these times at your location using detailed schedule below for time zones with many participants and the handy website https://timeanddate.com  for all other locations.

Schedule at a glance:  Download the schedule at a glance: Excel Sheet or PDF . Download the full schedule with all authors indicated: PDF

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Abstract Volume: Download PDF

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