The Carboniferous rainforest collapse
The coal forests fragment into islands, and the survivors are left smaller and isolated.
- When
- Known to
- ± 3 million years
- Era
- Carboniferous, Paleozoic
Around 305 million years ago a shift to a drier, more seasonal climate breaks the continuous equatorial rainforest into scattered refugia. Lycopsid forests collapse and are replaced by tree ferns and seed plants. Amphibians, tied to water, are badly hit; amniotes, which are not, diversify rapidly in the fragmented landscape. It is a minor extinction with an outsized evolutionary consequence — it hands the future to the reptile line.