Carboniferous PeriodThe Carboniferous Period was a period on the geologic time scale that followed the Devonian Period and ended at the beginning of the Permian Period. It lasted from 359 to 298 million years ago. The Carboniferous takes its name from the large amount of coal deposits discovered at this time. In North America, the period is often separated into two, the Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian. During this period, the environment included many swamps. The land barely rose above sea level, which flooded the forest and turned it into swamps. These vast swamps also contained a lot of coal. Today we can attribute most of our coal reserves to the Carboniferous period. Without the Carboniferous period, we would not have our coal reserves today, which has led to significant progress in our human history. The global climate at this time was extremely humid and tropical. Again, this helped the swamps thrive during the Carboniferous period. This humid and warm climate led to the emergence of terrestrial plant life. Big trees were growing everywhere and giving off so much oxygen. When plants and trees died during this period, they sank in water which contained no bacteria. This stopped them from decomposing and formed peat beds. After many years of layers of peat upon layers of peat, coal was being produced, which is why there were a lot of coals from that time. The oxygen level during this time was very high. The oxygen level was much higher at that time than it is on today's Earth. The oxygen level was so high that the insects were as big as today's raccoons. Thanks to this, scientists understood why so many animal species at the time were much larger than they are today. During the Carboni...... middle of paper ......iod. The formation of glaciers led to a huge drop in sea level which dried up the swamps. Swamps form because the water level was high and flooded the forest, so the low sea level really affected the huge swamp areas of the Carboniferous period. The climate changed from hot and humid to cool. The plants were unable to adapt to this change, so most of those that were thriving during this period died, but this led to new plants forming. Most amphibians that were thriving at this time also could not adapt to environmental climate change and so most died. Insects couldn't survive this change either. Reptiles, however, have survived climate change. They were able to adapt unlike all the other species they lived with during the Carboniferous period. These environmental changes eventually led to a new period, the Permian period..