OT SIG Meeting – October (Online)

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Speaker: Nick Riley, Director at Carboniferous Ltd

Title: The Carboniferous; a very special time on Earth

Abstract

The late Devonian comprised a series of extinction events. Some were probably driven by climate change, perhaps in response to the first appearance of trees in the mid-Devonian, which would have changed the biogeochemistry of the land-atmosphere- ocean system.  There is also evidence that a super nova may have irradiated the Earth thus enhancing the final end Devonian extinction event. The early Carboniferous, particularly in the marine realm, displays a period of gradual recovery from the Devonian extinctions, with renewed evolutionary radiation in the marine realm of calcareous benthic foraminifera, corals, echinoderms, ammonoids, and trilobites. In the terrestrial realm, plants diversified, particularly trees, leading to the first widespread equatorial rainforests on Earth. There is evidence both from marine and terrestrial organisms that by at least Viséan times oxygen levels were higher than today. This probably resulted from the CO₂ drawdown by the rainforests, thus enhancing a global cooling trend that was not reversed until the catastrophic end Permian extinction event. Winged insects appeared for the first time and remained the only creatures with powered flight until the pterosaurs appeared in the late Triassic, who likely preyed on insects. Tetrapod evolution, accelerated so that by late Carboniferous times the amphibians, true reptiles and the clade of tetrapods leading eventually to the appearance of the first mammals in the late Triassic (Norian), had become distinct from each other.