The name Carboniferous means " coal-bearing " and derives from the Latin words carbo ( coal ) and ferre ( to carry ), and was coined by geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822.

Terrestrial life was well established by the Carboniferous period.

Most of the Mesozoic supercontinent of Pangea was now assembled, although North China ( which would collide in the Latest Carboniferous ), and South China continents were still separated from Laurasia.

The Late Carboniferous Pangaea was shaped like an " O.

There were two major oceans in the Carboniferous — Panthalassa and Paleo-Tethys, which was inside the " O " in the Carboniferous Pangaea.

The early part of the Carboniferous was mostly warm ; in the later part of the Carboniferous, the climate cooled.

The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, was an event that occurred 300 million years ago.

The Triassic was generally dry, a trend that began in the late Carboniferous, and highly seasonal, especially in the interior of Pangaea.

In North America, where the early Carboniferous beds are primarily marine limestones, the Pennsylvanian was in the past treated as a full fledged geologic period between the Mississippian and the Permian.

One of the greatest evolutionary innovations of the Carboniferous was the amniote egg, which allowed for the further exploitation of the land by certain tetrapods.

At the start of the Permian, the Earth was still at the grip of an Ice Age from the Carboniferous.

By the end of the Carboniferous, when levels had lowered to something approaching today's, around 17 times more water was lost per unit of uptake.

The North China Craton was an independent continent prior to the Triassic period, and is known to have been the northernmost piece of land in the world during the Carboniferous.

The Delamerian Fold Belt is mainly composed of Neoproterozoic-Cambrian rocks and was deformed in the Late Cambrian Delamerian Orogeny whereas the Lachlan Fold Belt contains mainly Cambrian-Devonian rocks with the main deformations occurring in the late Ordovician to early Carboniferous interval.

Between these two layers is a thinner layer of Carboniferous sandstone, which was baked hard when the Whin Sill was molten 295 million years ago.

At the end of the Carboniferous period ( 300 Ma ), the Hercynian or Variscan orogeny, in which the supercontinent Pangaea formed from Gondwana and Laurasia, was ended.

Built on the boundary of the Lower Carboniferous limestone and the Upper Carboniferous shale, sandstone and gritstone, the original settlement was largely of limestone construction, of which only the parish church of St Anne, built in 1625, remains.

By the Devonian, North China was located near the Arctic Circle and it remained the northernmost land in the world during the Carboniferous Ice Age between 300 and 280 million years ago.

The Rheinisches Schiefergebirge was subjected to folding and faulting in the Variscan orogeny in Carboniferous times and eroded to a peneplain in the Permian.

During the Carboniferous and Permian periods ( 340-250 million years ago ), Hạ Long Bay was at shallow sea level.

Early Carboniferous land plants, some of which were preserved in coal balls, were very similar to those of the preceding Late Devonian, but new groups also appeared at this time.

In the Upper Carboniferous (), Arthropleura became the largest known land invertebrate of all time, reaching lengths of up to.

It is also a rare example in Europe of an outcrop representing three geological time periods ( the Silurian, the Devonian and the Upper Carboniferous ).

Since the end of the Carboniferous time there has been erosion and more than a thousand metres of the coal-bearing rocks have been completely removed from the area.

Ghawar occupies an anticline above a basement fault block dating to Carboniferous time, about 320 million years ago ; Cretaceous tectonic activity, as the northeast margin of Africa began to impinge on southwest Asia, enhanced the structure.

Around 360 Ma at the start of the Carboniferous period Great Britain was lying at the equator, covered by the warm shallow waters of the Rheic Ocean, during which time the Carboniferous Limestone was deposited, as found in the Mendip Hills, north and south Wales, in the Peak District of Derbyshire, north Lancashire, the northern Pennines and southeast Scotland.

The Carboniferous was a time of great change for the area.

Below this level is a complex Precambrian basement believed to be made up of the remnants of the original Tarim microplate, which accrued to the growing Eurasian continent in Carboniferous time.

The second main phase of movement was during the Carboniferous, this time with a dextral ( right-lateral ) sense.

The atoll was built by marine organisms such as corals and stromatoporoids, mostly during Carboniferous time, but some reef-building probably occurred earlier during the Devonian Period as well as later during the Permian.

Though most of the other soil orders known today existed by the time of the Carboniferous Ice Age 280 million years ago, Mollisols are not known from the paleopedological record any earlier than the Eocene.

Looking roughly like a top-heavy Christmas tree, Archaeopteris may have played a part in the transformation of Earth ’ s climate during the Devonian before becoming extinct within a short period of time at the beginning of the Carboniferous period.

The lagerstätte occurs within a paleovalley that was incised into the surrounding Carboniferous cyclothemic sequence during a time of low sea level, and was then filled in during a subsequent transgression.

The Permo-Carboniferous refers to the time period including the latter parts of the Carboniferous and early part of the Permian period.

Glacial activity spanned virtually the whole of Carboniferous and Early Permian time ( A. G. Smith, 1997 ).

* The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse occurred 300 million years ago, at which time tropical rainforests were devastated by climate change.

*; 2006: Global time scale and regional stratigraphic reference scales of Central and West Europe, East Europe, Tethys, South China, and North America as used in the Devonian – Carboniferous – Permian Correlation Chart 2003 ( DCP 2003 ), Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 240 ( 1-2 ): pp 318 – 372.

The granitic plutons of the Harz-the Brocken, Ramberg and Oker plutons-emerged towards the end of the Harz mountain-building phase of the Upper Carboniferous, about 300 million years ago.

Structurally the Delaware, Midland and Marfa were foreland basins created when the Ouachita Mountains were uplifted as the southern continent Gondwana collided with Laurasia, forming the supercontinent Pangea in the Late Carboniferous ( Pennsylvanian ).

By the end of the Carboniferous period the various continents of the Earth had fused to form the super-continent of Pangaea.

This was happening at around the Equator during the later Carboniferous, forming Pangaea with Avalonia near its centre but partially flooded by shallow sea.

Toward the end of the Carboniferous, around 290 million years ago, Gondwana, the southern part of Pangaea, was located near the south pole.

Both orogenies resulted in the assembly of a super-continent, Pangaea, which was essentially complete by the end of the Carboniferous.