Carboniferous Period

What happened during this time?

Biological

Flora

• Lycophytes

  • Tree-sized clubmosses (lepidodendrids) dominate in tropical swamps

  • Protolepidodenrids survive until the end of the Mississippian

  • The modern herbaceous clubmosses, including Lycopodiales and Selaginellales, appear during the Carboniferous

• Ferns and horsetails

  • Large horsetails (e.g. Calamites) dominate rivers and stream edges

  • The Sphenophyllales dominate as understory, shrub-like plants 

  • The cladoxylopsid ferns survive into the Carboniferous, but disappear before the Pennsylvanian

  • Zygopteridales and Stauropteridales fluorish during the Carboniferous, but the latter group disappears in the Pennsylvanian 

  • The Marattialean tree fern, Pecopteris, dominates during the Pennsylvanian

• The progymnosperms, such as Archaeopteris, the Stenokoleales, and the Noeggerathians are on the landscape, but only the latter group survives after the Carboniferous

• There is a diversification of seed plants during the Carboniferous

  • Lyginopteridales, Medullosales, and Cordaitales diversify during the Mississippian

  • During the Pennsylvanian, new groups appear such as the Cycadales, Callistophytales, Peltaspermales, and the early conifer Voltziales

  • Several early pteridosperms disappear during the Carboniferous (e.g. Hydrasperma, Lyginopteridales)

• Origin of swamp and forest systems 

  • During this time, the vast swamps of scale trees, ferns, horsetails, and seed ferns created most of the coal that we use for energy today

  • These plants grew and decayed in these environments, but some biological or environmental factors inhibited the amount of complete decay of plant material, resulting in massive amounts of coal being created during this time 

  • The "evolutionary lag hypothesis", claims that fungi had not evolved the ability to degrade lignin, a chemical that makes wood tough and resistant

  • Evidence from Nelsen et al. (2015), claims that there were most probably lignin-degrading organisms around during the Carboniferous, and the abundance of coal during this time was "likely the result of a unique combination of everwet tropical conditions and extensive depositional systems" with massive amounts of plant material being dropped in these humid environments.