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Don't forget your source criticism :)

This is GREAT Alida! Keep up the awesome work! I love that you have included so many pictures, it really creates an interesting piece of work to read through! :) :) :) :) haha

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The Carboniferous Period- Palaeozoic Era

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The Carboniferous Period- Palaeozoic Era

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- Began around 359 million years ago
- Ended around 299 million years ago
- Named after the large deposit of coal during this period.
- Giants forests and swamps.
- Big landmasses called Gondwana and Laurasia.

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Around this time period new species formed. Marine Animals started to appear on land. Some of the new species were wing-born insects and amphibians.

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The climate during this period was wet and humid. It was a tropical climate which allowed lots of vegetation to grow. The large amount of vegetation became the reason for the large amount of coal that formed. This coal is used today. The land consisted of two large landmasses called Gondwana and Laurasia. They would later come together to form supercontinent Pangaea.

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This period had the highest oxygen level in the Atmosphere ever. Around this time there were lots of big forests which had a big effect on the oxygen level in the atmosphere. Around this time the atmosphere was made up of 20% oxygen, much like it is today. The oxygen level was up to 35% at its most.

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During this period almost all of Earth's land was covered in huge rainforests, swamps and lots of ocean. There was a great diversity of plants. The vast vegetation contributed to the oxygen level in the atmosphere and also the amount of coal that formed when the trees decomposed. The environment looked like this.

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A large ocean covered most of the Earth during this period. The sea was shallow but the sea level changed a lot due to glaciation that increased and decreased irregularly which made the sea levels rise and sink rapidly. When the sea levels rose it created a lot of swamps. The Carboniferous period is sometimes called "Age of the Crinoids" because the seas were filled with them. Crionoids were marine invertabrates. The picture below is a Crionoid fossil. There were lots of other there marine animal too.

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During this time period amphibians and large insects roamed the Earth.
These life forms grew in size and number and became more diverse. There existed a group called Arthropods which consists of Millipedes, spiders and insects. These were the apex predators. Giant insects such as mammoth cockroaches could grow up to one meter! Centipedes that were two meters long. And dragonflies called Magaeura, as big as seagulls. The size of an insect might depend on how much air the are able to breath, the large amount of oxygen in the atmosphere could explain the reason insect could grow to such sizes.
An four legged amphibian called a Tetrapod dominated in the rivers lakes and swamps. The first picture shows what it looked like. It could grow up to two meters long. The second picture is of a fossil of a Megaeura.
Among the dominant plant species are club-mosses and horse-tails.

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Many fossils in great conditions have been found from the Paleozoic area, most of them have specificaly been found from the Carboniferous period. That is because plants and animals have been preserved in a minereral called Sidrite. They have left 3D-holes in the iderite that allowed scientists to create 3D-models of the plant or animal which gives us a clear picture of what they might have looked like. Usually plants die and turn into soil. The picture below shows some arthropods that lived during the Carboniferous period, that have been preserved in Sidrite and then reconstructed to a 3D-model.

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Fossil records can prove that there was lots of vegetation and animals in different shapes and sizes. It showes the big diversity between plants and animals during this time. Just by looking at fossils you can determin what they ate, how the climates were, it it's a land animal or not, how they have evolved and many other things. It can also prove that the theory of continental drift is true! Glossopteris is a tree like plant with large leaves that grew during the Carboniferous period. Fossils of these plants have been found in numerous places with large oceans in between such as India, Africa, South America, Antartica, Australia. These Fossils could not have been found in so many different places in the world with such different climates, if not our many continents were once fewer larger continents connected. The picture below shows countries where Glossopteris have been found and how the continents were connected.

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We can still see traces after the Carboniferous period today. If we look at the environment we notice that we have lots of coal that we use today. The primarely use of coal today is to generate electricity and heat. It could also be used for steel and cement production.
The Appalachian Mountains in North America fromed when "Africa" and "North America" collided with eachother during the Carboniferous period, this makes the mountains very old. You can hike the Appalacian trail because it's very beautiful. People have also been mining there because it's rich with coal.
Many plants and animals that existed during the this period strongly resemble those who existed today. With the help of fossils we can see what species survived and evolved to what they are today. Some species changed alot, some went extinct and some look almost exactly like they did 300 million years ago. This proves the theory of evolution to be true, because we can see how animals and plants have evolved for millions of years to to-day and how they will continue to evolve.

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Research Source List- Alida Victor- carboniferous