Carboniferous << kahr buh NIHF uhr uhs >> Period was a time in Earth‘s history that lasted from about 359 million to 299 million years ago. The word carboniferous is Latin for coal-bearing. Rocks of this age from the United States, Europe, and much of Asia contain abundant coal deposits. Carboniferous Period coals fueled the Industrial Revolution, the rapid rise of industrialization that began during the late 1700’s. Carboniferous rocks remain an important source of energy because many petroleum deposits formed in them.
Carboniferous rocks from Europe and North America appear similar because the two continents formed a single land mass at the time. Toward the end of the period, this land mass collided with another mass consisting mainly of what are now South America and Africa. Most of the world’s land had begun to form a single vast continent called Pangaea. The southern reaches of this continent lay in the cold region around the South Pole. Evidence suggests that a major ice sheet began to form in this area during the end of the Carboniferous Period. This occurrence marked the beginning of one of the longest glacial epochs in Earth’s history. A glacial epoch is a global cooling period marked by the gradual growth of glaciers. The glacial epoch that began in the Carboniferous Period lasted tens of millions of years, eventually coming to an end in the middle of the following Permian Period.
During the Carboniferous Period, life flourished in a vast expanse of swamps that stretched for great distances along the equator. Various types of trees, many related to modern ferns, grew in these swamps. The compressed remains of the swamps’ plant material form the Carboniferous Period coal deposits. The swamps housed the earliest winged insects, the first creatures to fly. Early tetrapods (four-legged animals), many of which resembled crocodiles in both size and appearance, also lived in the swamps. These animals had an amphibian way of life, laying their eggs in the water. The first amniotes appeared during the Carboniferous Period. Their major innovation, the ability to lay watertight eggs, enabled them to live away from the swamps. However, amniotes did not move to dry land in large numbers until after the Carboniferous Period.
In North America, geologists divide the Carboniferous Period into two smaller periods. The earlier period, called the Mississippian Period, produced limestone deposits found throughout North America, Europe, and much of Asia. The later period, the Pennsylvanian Period, produced equally widespread deposits of coal-bearing rocks.
