Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse

The Carboniferous rainforest collapse was a minor extinction event that occurred around 305 million years ago, at the end of the Moscovian stage and into the early Kasimovian stage of the Carboniferous period. Vast tropical coal forests covering equatorial Europe and North America fragmented into isolated ecological patches, triggering widespread extinctions among plants and animals and reshaping the landscape. The collapse was driven mainly by climate: the region turned cooler and drier as Earth entered a brief but intense ice age, sea levels dropped substantially, and glacial ice spread across much of Gondwana, while volcanic activity from the Skagerrak Large Igneous Province may also have contributed. Dominant lycopsid plants gave way to tree fern dominated ecosystems, amphibians suffered heavy losses from their inability to tolerate drier conditions, and early reptiles and synapsids diversified rapidly in response.