Response Of Late Carboniferous And Early Permian Plant Communities To Climate Change

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ecosystem stability
glaciation
biome
coal
extinction
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DiMichele, William A
Gastaldo, Robert A
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Late Carboniferous and Early Permian strata record the transition from a cold interval in Earth history, characterized by the repeated periods of glaciation and deglaciation of the southern pole, to a warm-climate interval. Consequently, this time period is the best available analogue to the Recent in which to study patterns of vegetational response, both to glacial-interglacial oscillation and to the appearance of warm climate. Carboniferous wetland ecosystems were dominated by spore-producing plants and early gymnospermous seed plants. Global climate changes, largely drying,forced vegetational changes, resulting in a change to a seed plant–dominated world, beginning first at high latitudes during the Carboniferous, reaching the tropics near the Permo-Carboniferous boundary. For most of this time plant assemblages were very conservative in their composition. Change in the dominant vegetation was generally a rapid process, which suggests that environmental thresholds were crossed, and involved little mixing of elements from the wet and dry floras.

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2001-05-01
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Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
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Copyright 2001 Annual Reviews. Reprinted from Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Volume 29, May 2001, pages 461-487. Publisher URL: http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.earth.29.1.461 The US Government has the right to retain a nonexclusive, royalty-free licence in and to any copyright covering this paper.
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