Carboniferous Swamp Characteristic of the Carboniferous period (from about 360 million to 300 million years ago) were its dense and swampy forests, which gave rise to large deposits of peat.

When the geologic time periods were being named, mainly in Great Britain, the time during which coal was being deposited was christened the Carboniferous Period.

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The Earth nearly froze over when today’s coal was first buried The Carboniferous period was notable for its lack of carbon in the atmosphere.

It made for a neat story: Question: Why did so much of the world’s coal form during the geologic period we now call the Carboniferous? Answer: Large tree-like plants evolved before fungi evolved ...

Both species were sauropsids —part of a larger group of extant and extinct reptiles and birds that presumably lived during the late Carboniferous.

During the Carboniferous Period, Earth's atmospheric oxygen levels surged, helping some plants and animals grow to gigantic proportions. One notable example was Arthropleura, the biggest bug ever ...

More than 100 million years later during the Carboniferous period, Pentamerus, a clamlike, two-shelled invertebrate, clustered on ocean floors.

A study reveals how the Sigillaria brardii species -- a fossil plant typical of peatlands and abundant in the flora of Europe and North America during the Upper Carboniferous -- colonized new ...