Talk:Carboniferous

Nomenclature
Added Pennsylvanian and Mississippian labels to stage names to show to which epoch stages belong; lowercased several "early" and "late" Carboniferous because early and late Carboniferous are not formal subdivisions (Early and Late Mississippian and Pennsylvanian are, however). --Geologyguy 15:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Aren't these subdivisions valid only in the USA? 220.236.210.230 09:08, 5 November 2006 (UTC) Ludo


 * Yes, this article is highly USA-centric. Where, for instance, is the Westphalian, possibly the most significant Carboniferous epoch in terms of European economic geology! Pyrope 12:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Pennsylvanian and Mississippian are the internationally designated names for the two epochs of the Carboniferous. In the USA, Pennsylvanian and Mississippian are treated as full periods, but, appropriately, Wikipedia does not and simply makes note of the US usage.  In this article on Carboniferous, it is entirely appropriate to use them, correctly, as the international Epoch designations.  As for Wesphalian, it is connon usage in parts of Europe, but the internationally accepted Age designations are those listed here, Bashkirian, Moscovian, etc.  If someone wants to add information about the Westphalian, in terms of its value and where it fits as an informal element of the formal time scale, that would be great - but it does not belong in the listing of the formal subdivisions.  Cheers Geologyguy 15:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Now, I am quite prepared to be wrong, but I am sitting here reading the above, in a university geology dept lab, sitting beside a big poster called the 'Geological Timetable' (published by Elsevier). It says that the Carboniferous period is split into Upper/Late, Middle and Lower/Early series/epochs.  It also says that the Eurasian general names for the periods within it are stephanian, westphalian, namurian, visean and tournaisian, and that the North American general names are pennsylvanian and mississippian. Moscovian etc are listed under the Eurasia local/regional heading.  So, is the poster wrong?  It certainly doesn't claim anything 'international' about Pennsylvanian and Mississipian.Ewan carmichael 17:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, the Elsevier chart is out of date with respect to the International Geologic Time Scale published by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (2004-05), which is the reliable source agreed to by Wikipeidans for geological nomenclature. That does not mean that the usage is applied uniformly around the world, and there are still plenty of geologists around who use old terminology, at least in casual usage. So, strictly speaking, Europeans should be using Mississippian and Pennsylvanian as the epochs of the Carboniferous -- and Americans should use the name "Carboniferous" for the full period name and Moscovian etc for the stages. When you get to stage names, usage tends to be local anyway - but, at the Period name level, that's the now internationally accepted nomenclature. But I don't think you'll find americans not using Mississippian and Pennsylvanian as period names any time soon, nor Europeans using them as epochs of the Carboniferous.  It is just a matter of common usage vs the official standard.  There never had been an international standard until recently. But, that is what WP uses. Cheers Geologyguy 18:25, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It makes perfect sense that which names a researcher uses are going to be in line with the rock strata themselves, however I think too much emphasis is being placed on the "International" in the "International" Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). The US-centric names should absolutely be included, but presenting them as the only ones labelled "official" gives the article an bizarre and arrogant feel to anyone familiar with the classic "European" system, which, at the time of writing, represents the majority of peer-reviewed research on Google Scholar. CypherZero0  (talk) 13:43, 13 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Breaking news; the Carboniferous is no more! The ICS have promoted the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian  to full period status.  They don't seem to have updated their website yet, though, and a quick search didn't turn up a reference - someone may wish to search for one. Verisimilus  T  15:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
 * What a pain (at least as far as us updating a bunch of articles go!). Next you know, the International Whatever will make Pluto a planet again. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 15:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I have been looking through the ICS pages and they do not confirm this to be the case. Enlil Ninlil (talk) 12:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The link to the 2004 ICS chart is broken. More recent alternative is http://www.stratigraphy.org/upload/ISChart2008.pdf but I don't know whether this is the latest or best link. (And the Carboniferous is hanging in there!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.35.14 (talk) 21:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I really think the USA-centric divisions are totally out of place. A lay person cannot make head nor tail of this, it's quite surreal.84.92.169.252 (talk) 01:26, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Can I suggest that we replace or extend the existing table so as to include dates based on http://www.stratigraphy.org/upload/ISChart2009.pdf and remove much of what currently appears under the heading of 'Subdivisions' as it is both difficult to understand what many of the entries refer to and is too cumbersome within the article as presently structured. The scope of the text needs to be global though referring to the Carboniferous sequences in Europe and North America which have been important in terms of the naming of parts. There may even be a case for a separate (linked) article on the subdivisons of the Carboniferous - perhaps focussing on the history of its subdivision - a tangled story and one which serves to confuse with so many once-competing subdivision names in textbooks and on the web. Any comments? cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Rocks and Coal
Despite its title suggesting wider coverage, this section is almost exclusively devoted to the coal-bearing rocks of the period whereas (and I'm speaking largely from a UK perspective here) the Carboniferous Limestone and the Namurian Millstone Grit are of equal or greater importance when considered from the point of view of the modern landscapes they create even if they have not been of such economic significance - though a lot of limestone is quarried. Scotland has an important suite of volcanic rocks in the Carboniferous too. I may get around to adding something unless someone else wants to take this on. Geopersona (talk) 08:56, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest that the following article be added to the reference section, with a short extract under "Rocks and Coal": (http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/06/29/3534160.htm?)CMOS222 (talk) 07:16, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Lack of neutrality
If this encyclopedia is international, why does it feature a map of the paleo-USA? I think it should be removed and the person who posted it should really rethink his editing policy... I don't see any maps of wales or GB in the article about Cambrian period nor any germany, swiss or france maps in the Jurassic period article. I don't think the idea would even cross any of those people's minds... This article is USA centered and should not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sinekonata (talk • contribs) 22:32, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * 18 September 2010 and this article still lacks neutrality.-- deltabaryon 04:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is made by people like us - we can change that situation. Of course, getting around to doing it is another thing! cheers Geopersona (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

What?
What does "Other life forms - None" suppose to mean? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.238.7.35 (talk) 12:29, 19 October 2009 (UTC)


 * That phrase doesn't appear in the article. Mikenorton (talk) 14:25, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Carboniferous-Permian date
Per "Snelling Chronology of the Geologic Record" 1985 best estimate for the date was 286+/-5Ma-ago (pp 114-117). Most all-Carboniferous Webb sights use this date. Query of atleast one sight resulted in issue of a tentative correction to the ICS 299Ma-ago time scale. I have found no explanations to the change to 299Ma-ago from the widely publicized 286Ma-ago which to my reckoning started about 10 years ago. Many sights to include museums use 286, even USGS has that date in many pages recently updated last year. This is a request for references as well as general comments.Morbas (talk) 04:56, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * According to Gradstein, Ogg & Smith 2004,, in the section on the Carboniferous (page 238), the 299±1.0 Ma date for the top of the system, comes from the U-Pb dating for the youngest population of zircons derived from four samples of tuffaceous marls taken from the Asselian-Gzhelian transition. Do you have a reference that calls either the dates or the stratigraphic position of the samples into question? Mikenorton (talk) 08:24, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Improving this and sibling articles
Please see comment at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geology/Periods cheers Geopersona (talk) 20:45, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Paleo-Pacific islands?
Over the past 200Myr, the Americas have obducted over ancient seafloor. And, North America has "swept up" numerous "accreted island arcs", e.g. the Intermontane & Insular terrains of the Pacific northwest region. Ergo, those accretions originally resided far out to sea, in the middle of the ancient paleo-Pacific ocean (evidently on the Farallon plate, east of what is now the east Pacific rise Mid-Ocean Ridge). For example, the Insular islands are thought to have arisen circa 330Mya. Perhaps ancient paleo-Pacific islands ("mini continents") should be depicted, on reconstructed earth maps, from the Carboniferous period? 66.235.38.214 (talk) 07:06, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

oxygen concentration and density of the atmosphere
The statement about a 35% concentration of oxygen resulting in an increase in density of 1/3 did sound implausible, but was correctly attributed to the source, David Beerling's 2007 book The Emerald Planet. I therefore undid the revert, and have updated the reference. Nevertheless it is sufficiently weird to need checking out. Beerling attributes the observation to the following article: Rayner, JMV (2003) Gravity, the atmosphere and the evolution of animal locomotion. pp. 161-183 IN: Evolution on planet Earth:the impact of the physical environment. Ed by LJ Rothschild and AM Lister, Academic press Amsterdam ISBN 978-0123884893. I have no access to this at the moment. If anyone can help verify that is what JMV Rayner actually said about the relationship between O2 concentration and atmospheric density it would be a useful contribution. Plantsurfer (talk) 16:51, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * This paper by R Dudley discusses this and says "The predicted value of air density at the peak of the late Paleozoic oxygen pulse (285 MYa) is about 1.56 kg/m3, an increase of 29% relative to the present sea-level value of 1.21 kg/m3." In an earlier paper Dudley states "Concomitant with this reduction in carbon dioxide concentration, the oxygen concentration of the late Paleozoic atmosphere may have risen to as high as 35 % (Berner and Canfield, 1989; see Fig. 1), a remarkable value compared with the 20.9 % of the contemporary atmosphere. This elevation of oxygen partial pressure occurred against the background of a constant nitrogen partial pressure (Hart, 1978; Holland, 1984), yielding an increased total pressure of the atmosphere." (my bolding) This perhaps makes it a little more believable. Mikenorton (talk) 20:05, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

In a 35% O2 environment many things could spontaneously catch fire that don't today. That would be self regulating then, I think 35% must be about tops. Ealtram (talk) 16:56, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

The atmospheric content of oxygen also reached their highest levels in history
Would not this say "in the geological history of the planet"? History by itself begins with humans writing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Soparamens (talk • contribs) 22:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Sub-periods
It's my understanding that Mississippian and Pennsylvanian are now formally recognised globally (through the decisions of the ICS) as sub-periods of the Carboniferous - a situation which applies equally to America and the rest of the world. Should we not therefore adjust the text to reflect that fact ie American geologists having formerly treated them as periods (in preference to Carboniferous) and non-American geologists now assimilating those terms into their own working, alongside 'Carboniferous'. Of course the 'non-standard' practice of individual geologists and indeed the written legacy will ensure that the two American-originated terms 'Mississippian period' and 'Pennsylvanian period' will continue to appear for some considerable time to come just as will 'Tertiary' - each term having through international agreement, been superseded. Continuing informal use in all cases should be properly acknowledged: comment invited. cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)


 * ICS is just one organisation, only by reviewing the literature will we see whether the terms are being "recognised globally" by researchers CypherZero0  (talk) 13:49, 13 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I think the ICS terms are recognized worldwide and I think they are the only worldwide terms, even if some geologists do not use them in their local stratigraphy (usually when they are not comparing with distant regions). For example, a rock formed during the Pennsylvanian is still Pennsylvanian even if it is also locally described as Westphalian in Western Europe, Atokan in North America or Moscovian in Russia. I think the point is that local stratigraphy does not "travel" well and therefore I think it is best for Wikipedia, with its worldwide editors and readers, to use the ICS timescale because it is the most-worldwide/least-local option. IUGS recommend many geological standards but I think the only one that IUGS-ICS define is the geological timescale. GeoWriter (talk) 21:57, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Cause of Carboniferous rainforest collapse
Lbdearmas recently changed the cause of the Carboniferous rainforest collapse from "climate change" to "environmental change". I reverted that based on my reading of the cited source. Lbdearmas has now reverted back to his preferred version. The source says "In cratonic areas of North America (where the effects of tectonics can be excluded), an abrupt shift to more arid climates has been linked to rainforest collapse (DiMichele et al., 2009, 2010), though the exact causal mechanism remains uncertain". It could be changed to "aridification" I suppose, although that is a change in climate. Mikenorton (talk) 21:28, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Link redirect to Facebook hate speech
Most of the links in this page seem to have been changed to a redirect to a Facebook page with hate speech. I'm not sure how to figure out which past edits had the right links to roll back to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.61.231 (talk) 04:51, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I have not found any links in this Wikipedia article that redirect to Facebook. Are you sure that your device is not infected by a virus?
 * If you ask Facebook to delete the page that you believe is hate speech and that you claim most of the links in this article redirect to, all redirects from this Wikipedia article to the deleted Facebook page would become dead links. This would then give you time to thoroughly check the version history of this Wikipedia article to restore the correct links. You can determine which edit to roll back to by finding the most recent version that does not have the redirect to Facebook. Use the "version history" tab at the top of the article and then select versions to compare. GeoWriter (talk) 19:39, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Formation of coal not caused by lack of fungi
In January 2016, the following paper titled "Delayed fungal evolution did not cause the Paleozoic peak in coal production" was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780611/

The paper states that coal accumulation patterns implicate a unique combination of climate and tectonics during Pangea formation. Specifically, dead plant material accumulated in wet swampy anoxic environments during the Carboniferous Period, and was buried in basins in the Earth's crust formed as a consequence of mountain-building. There is no need to invoke a theory of time lag in the evolution of fungi to explain the observed evidence.

In a subsequent article intended for laypeople, the paper's senior author, Kevin Boyce of Stanford, is quoted as saying, regarding the old "time lag" idea: "Much of the scientific community was really enamored with this simple, straightforward explanation. So, it has not only refused to die, it has become a conventional wisdom."

http://news.stanford.edu/2016/01/22/coal-formation-pangea-012216/

The paper presents other arguments refuting the idea that lack of organisms to decompose lignin was responsible for coal deposits (which would invalidate much of what is currently written in the "Rocks and coal" section of the Wikipedia page) but they need to be analyzed and summarized by someone familiar with the subject matter, which is not me.209.239.1.216 (talk) 18:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Revisiting 'Rocks and Coal'
I'm a UK wikipedian hoping for balanced international perspective. I'd take issue with a couple of statements in this section: "Carboniferous rocks in Europe and eastern North America largely consist of a repeated sequence of limestone, sandstone, shale and coal beds.[14] In North America, the early Carboniferous is largely marine limestone, which accounts for the division of the Carboniferous into two periods in North American schemes."

There is in the British and Irish Carboniferous, no repeated sequence, as described in the first (seemingly referenced) sentence, though there are of course repeating cycles in various parts of the period. And as to the second sentence, the early Carboniferous in Britain and Ireland is largely marine limestone but the Carboniferous has not traditionally been broken into two periods here as a result so why should it be said to account for that situation in North America? thanks Geopersona (talk) 09:36, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This article is honestly just terrible, there's so much uncited and irrelevant text, feel free to fix the text as you see fit. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:14, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Carboniferous-Earliest Permian Biodiversification Event
The article Carboniferous-Earliest Permian Biodiversification Event is for all intents and purposes based on the results of a single paper released last year, and the term has subsequently only been used by one other paper. For concepts like biodiversification events there really needs to be more literature than this to write about it, simply regurgitating the results of a single paper is inadequate. The contents of the article could be adequately covered in the Carboniferous article, and I suggest that the useful contents be selectively merged here, and then that article be redirected. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I disagree with merging the CPBE article into this one, as the evolution and diversification of marine invertebrates is already discussed in it, and the CPBE, including its most intense interval, extends into the Early Permian rather than being a solely Carboniferous event. Furthermore, while the name is new, the explosion of foraminiferan diversity and to a lesser extent other clades during this time period has been known for a while. Perhaps a modification of the article to note that the CPBE is a tentative and proposed concept rather than one that's gained wide acceptance like the GOBE and Cambrian Explosion? Anteosaurus magnificus (talk) 19:35, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Cause of increased atmospheric oxygen
Can somebody with better understanding than me check if more buried biologically fixed carbon "lead to" higher atmospheric Oxygen. My (non-expert) intuition tells me it was the increased number of plants doing more photosynthesis which increased atmospheric O2 not the deposits of fixed carbon. Either way, I feel this could be rewritten to clarify. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.233.2.131 (talk) 00:59, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Paleogeography rewrite
I’m happy to have a go at rewriting the paleogeography section along similar lines to the equivalent Devonian section. It’s going to take me a while so just wanted to check whether anyone else was working on this before I start? Silica Cat (talk) 17:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)