The Carboniferous Period

Life During the Mississippian Period:

• Both vertebrate and invertebrate animals inhabited the earth during the Mississippian Period

• Organisms such as arthropods, corals, crinoids, bryozoa, mollusks, lived in the warm shallow seas and prospered

• On the other hand, trilobites were not increasing in numbers and were very much reduced

• Dendrite Graptiloids become extinct

• This period had the earliest marine amoebas (fusulinind foramnifers), but they are tiny

• The nautilda flourished out of all of the nautiloid (palcephalopoda) cephalopods

• The last of the Actinocerida, the Oncocerida also become extinct

• Many kinds of Ammonoid cephalopods evolved

• There were many diverse sharks, actinopterygian and sarcopterygian fish 

• Places which were covered by forest before (during the Late Devonian Period) were now covered by shrubs. They were mostly pteridosperms (weeds) are less than 2 meters tall.

• Plants were useful in giving shelter for invertebrates 

• Invertebrates provided food for tetrapods

• The earliest reptiles were found

• Amphibians were abundant

• Many large scale trees and seed ferns (vascular plants) were found

• Terrestrial invertebrates consisted of mites, scropions, arachnids (spiders), millipedes, collembolans (springtails), athropleurids, eurpterids, diverse insects

• Tetrapods greatly evolved. The majority were mostly semi-aquatic