Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse

Why is this an artist’s rendition rather than an actual photo? Because it’s pretty difficult to photograph biomes that existed 360 million years ago.

Carboniferous rainforest collapse

• the Carboniferous period began around 300 million years ago
• horsetails, scrambling plants, ferns, club mosses, cycads, lycophytes, all of these plants grew in vast amounts
• this was a period of immense coal bed formation, as these plants would dye, fall into the swampy understory of the rain forest and remain there for thousands of years
• it covered the region near the equator of the super continent Euramerica (a land mass composed of what is now Europe and America)
• about 305 million years ago, this carbon forming ecosystem began to fall apart
• tree ferns started to disappear and smaller fern plants took over
• rainforests were broken up into tiny islands of densely vegetated land
• climate change was afoot
• the drying out (aridification) and cooling of the earth’s atmosphere made life impossible for these plants
• sea levels dropped and ice covered much of the earth’s land masses
• and the carboniferous rainforest was no more

How sad to think that the mighty lycophyte trees are nothing but fuel nowadays, but thus is the process of life on earth. Majesty only lasts for so long.