Carboniferous Animals & Coal Forests

04Paleozoic

They occupied seafloors for nearly 300 million years, and their compound eyes preserve secrets of early vision.

17Paleozoic

This many-segmented arthropod grew longer than a person in coal-swamp forests.

36Paleozoic

Opposing tooth blades projected from its jaws like curved shears.

83Paleozoic

This griffinfly’s wings spanned roughly seventy centimeters above Carboniferous forests.

104Paleozoic

This tiny insect hunter belonged to an early generation of vertebrates freed from laying eggs in water.

105Paleozoic

Crossbars projected from the spines of its tall sail above a broad plant-processing body.

124Paleozoic

A straight trunk patterned with diamond leaf scars forked only high above the Carboniferous mire.

125Paleozoic

Casts of jointed stems record large horsetail relatives; Calamites suckowii does not automatically name a plant with all organs known.

126Paleozoic

Woody stems carried immense fernlike fronds, yet seeds grew among the foliage of this vanished seed fern.

137Paleozoic

Eyes sat at the ends of a crossbar and a long proboscis ended in a toothed grasping organ.

147Paleozoic

Vertical rows of leaf scars stamped the tall trunk, beneath a crown of sparse branches and grasslike microphylls.

148Paleozoic

Rounded pinnules carried fanlike veins and looked fernlike, yet immense seeds grew among the fronds.

149Paleozoic

Clusters of long strap-shaped leaves crowned woody trees from an extinct gymnosperm lineage near early conifers.

150Paleozoic

Six wedge-shaped leaves encircled each node of a slender stem that trailed across the ground or climbed larger trees.

181Paleozoic

A patterned wing only about two centimeters across pushes the secure record of insect flight into the Early Carboniferous.

182Paleozoic

Beyond four wings packed with netlike veins, the thorax carried a pair of small immobile winglets.

183Paleozoic

Scaling from the surviving giant wing suggests a four-winged span near half a meter, among the largest palaeodictyopterans known.

216Paleozoic

A high bony sail towered above the squat body and may have served display, recognition or heat exchange.

260Paleozoic

A single head spine, forked teeth and continuous dorsal fin defined this freshwater shark.

262Paleozoic

Low vertebral ridges accompanied a deep skull and strongly differentiated teeth.

308Paleozoic

A flower-bud body carried five feeding and respiratory grooves.

325Paleozoic

Tiny limbs and strong jaws show an early tetrapod returning almost completely to water.

359Paleozoic

An elongated nostril region may reflect life in drier upland settings.

360Paleozoic

More than forty trunk vertebrae formed a long body with extremely small limbs.