Amniotes, tetrapods that evolved the cleidoic egg and thus independence from aquatic larval stages, appeared ca 314 Ma during the Coal Age. The rapid diversification of amniotes and other tetrapods over the course of the Late Carboniferous period was recently attributed to the fragmentation of coal-swamp rainforests ca 307 Ma. However, the amniote fossil record during the Carboniferous is relat...

A Mississippian miospore assemblage has been recorded from well A in the Persian Gulf in Iranian offshore, for the first time. Fifteen species of spores have been recognized in the Early Carboniferous assemblage of this well which the most important of them are: Spelaeotriletes arenaceus, Aratrisporites saharaensis, Spelaeotriletes balteatus, Spelaeotriletes triangulus and Radiizonates arcuatus...

The Carboniferous and early Permian were critical intervals in the diversification of early four-limbed vertebrates (tetrapods), yet the major patterns of diversity and biogeography during this time remain unresolved. Previous estimates suggest that global tetrapod diversity rose continuously across this interval and that habitat fragmentation following the 'Carboniferous rainforest collapse' (...

Molecular clock data indicate that the first zygomycetous fungi occurred on Earth during the Precambrian, however, fossil evidence of these organisms has been slow to accumulate. In this paper, the fossil record of the zygomycetous fungi is compiled, with a focus on structurally preserved Carboniferous and Triassic fossils interpreted as zygosporangium-gametangia complexes and resembling those ...

The Variscan French Massif Central experienced two successive stages of extension from Middle Carboniferous to Early Permian. In the northern Massif Central, the first stage began in the late Visean, immediately after nappe stacking, and is well recorded by NamurianWestphalian synkinematic plutonism. The Middle Carboniferous leucogranites widespread in the NW Massif Central (Limousin and Sioule...

Earth history was punctuated during the Permo-Carboniferous [300-250 million years (Myr) ago] by the longest and most severe glaciation of the entire Phanerozoic Eon. But significant uncertainty surrounds the concentration of CO(2) in the atmosphere through this time interval and therefore its role in the evolution of this major prePleistocene glaciation. Here, I derive 24 Late Paleozoic CO(2) ...

A new eureptile, Concordia cunninghami, gen. et sp. nov., is described from the Upper Pennsylvanian Hamilton-Fossillagerstätte, Kansas, U.S.A. The new taxon is currently known on the basis of two well-preserved skulls. A phylogenetic analysis groups Concordia consistently with captorhinids; the holotype, therefore, can be regarded as the oldest record of a captorhinid reptile, and the first one...

A Carboniferous root apex reiterates the importance of the fossil record and classic developmental plant anatomy for modern evo-devo perspectives on plant diversity and evolution.

The arsenic concentrations in 297 coal samples were collected from the main coal-mines of 26 provinces in China were determined by molybdenum blue coloration method. These samples were collected from coals that vary widely in coal rank and coal-forming periods from the five main coal-bearing regions in China. Arsenic content in Chinese coals range between 0.24 to 71 mg/kg. The mean of the conce...

Insects were the first animals to evolve powered flight and did so perhaps 90 million years before the first flight among vertebrates. However, the earliest fossil record of flying insect lineages (Pterygota) is poor, with scant indirect evidence from the Devonian and a nearly complete dearth of material from the Early Carboniferous. By the Late Carboniferous a diversity of flying lineages is k...