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Nature through Time pp 317–343Cite as

The Coal Farms of the Late Paleozoic

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Abstract

The assembly of the supercontinent Pangea resulted in a paleoequatorial region known as Euramerica, a northern mid-to-high latitude region called Angara, and a southern high paleolatitudinal region named Gondwana. Forested peat swamps, extending over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, grew across this supercontinent during the Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and Permian in response to changes in global climate. The plants that accumulated as peat do not belong to the plant groups prominent across today’s landscapes. Rather, the plant groups of the Late Paleozoic that are responsible for most of the biomass in these swamps belong to the fern and fern allies: club mosses, horsetails, and true ferns. Gymnosperms of various systematic affinity play a subdominant role in these swamps, and these plants were more common outside of wetland settings. It is not until the Permian when these seed-bearing plants become more dominant. Due to tectonic activity associated with assembling the supercontinent, including earthquakes and volcanic ashfall, a number of these forests were buried in their growth positions. These instants in time, often referred to as T0 assemblages, provide insight into the paleoecological relationships that operated therein. Details of T0 localities through the Late Paleozoic demonstrate that the plants, and plant communities, of the coal forests are non-analogs to our modern world. Analysis of changing vegetational patterns from the Mississippian into the Permian documents the response of landscapes to overall changes in Earth Systems under icehouse to hothouse conditions.

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A slide presentation and an explanation of each slide’s content is freely available to everyone upon request via email to one of the editors: edoardo.martinetto@unito.it, ragastal@colby.edu, tschopp.e@gmail.com*The asterisk designates terms explained in the Glossary.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the array of grant funding agencies that have supported their research over the decades, which has resulted in the compilation of case studies presented herein. Those agencies are, in alphabetical order: Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Germany; American Chemical Society, Petroleum Research Fund; Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq); Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Brazil; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Brazil; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn, Germany; Fulbright Scholars Program, USA; Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (project 16-24062S); Joggins Fossil Institute; National Research Foundation of South Africa—African Origins Platform; National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.41530101); National Science Foundation of the United States of America; Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources; The Research Support Foundation of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS); Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB26000000); The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet); The United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC USA; Volkswagen Foundation, Hannover, Germany.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, Colby College, Waterville, ME, USA

    Robert A. Gastaldo

  2. Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Marion Bamford

  3. Geological Survey Division, Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines, Halifax, NS, Canada

    John Calder

  4. Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution, United States National Museum, Washington, DC, USA

    William A. DiMichele

  5. Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil

    Roberto Iannuzzi

  6. Universidade do Vale do Taquari - Univates, Lajeado, RS, Brazil

    André Jasper

  7. Institute of Geology and Palaeontology – Palaeobotany, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Hans Kerp

  8. Department of Palaeobiology, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden

    Stephen McLoughlin

  9. Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Stanislav Opluštil

  10. Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Hermann W. Pfefferkorn

  11. Museum für Naturkunde, Chemnitz, Germany

    Ronny Rößler

  12. Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Jun Wang

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  1. Robert A. Gastaldo
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  2. Marion Bamford
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  5. Roberto Iannuzzi
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  7. Hans Kerp
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  9. Stanislav Opluštil
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  10. Hermann W. Pfefferkorn
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  11. Ronny Rößler
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  12. Jun Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert A. Gastaldo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Edoardo Martinetto

  2. Division of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA

    Emanuel Tschopp

  3. Department of Geology, Colby College, Waterville, ME, USA

    Robert A. Gastaldo

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Gastaldo, R.A. et al. (2020). The Coal Farms of the Late Paleozoic. In: Martinetto, E., Tschopp, E., Gastaldo, R.A. (eds) Nature through Time. Springer Textbooks in Earth Sciences, Geography and Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35058-1_13

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