The Freakiest of October CARBONIFEROUS The Pennsylvanian Epoch

In the middle and late Carboniferous Period, the land was rising up out of the waters. Some of this was because of the land masses moving toward each other and pushing the land upward, but it was also because of the thickening of the Earth’s crust. Two ice sheets over the South Pole also took a large amount of water out of the oceans and the water cycle.

More of the land was exposed to the air at this time. Both plants and animals had to adapt to the changing habitat. Short periods of drought brought on by the glaciers caused mass extinctions of the invertebrates that lived in the shallow seas. The shallow seas became swamps between the ocean and the dry land.