LATE CARBONIFEROUS

The Late Carboniferous a Time of Great Coal Swamps

By the Late Carboniferous the continents that make up modern North America and Europe had collided with the southern continents of Gondwana to form the western half of Pangea. Ice covered much of the southern hemisphere and vast coal swamps formed along the equator.

More info about the Late Carboniferous

 By the end of the Paleozoic Era,  most of the oceans that had opened during the breakup of Pannotia, were consumed  

 as the continents collided to form the supecontinent of Pangea.Centered on the Equator, Pangea stretched from the South Pole  

to the North Pole, and separated the Paleo-Tethys Ocean to the east, from the Panthalassic Ocean to the west.  

 During the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian the southern regions of Pangea (southern South America and southern   

Africa, Antarctica, India, southern India, and Australia) were glaciated.  Evidence of a north polar ice cap in eastern Siberia during  

 the Late Permian.  

 The broad Central Pangean mountain range formed an equatorial highland that during lateCarboniferous was the locus of   

coal production in an equatorial rainy belt.  By the mid-Permian, the Central Pangean mountain range had moved northward into  

drier climates and the interior of North America and Northern Europe became desert-like as the continued uplift of the mountain  

rangeblocked moisture-laden equatorial winds.  

 The term "Pangea" means "all land".   Though we call the supercontinent that formed at theend of the Paleozoic Era,  

 "Pangea", this supercontinent probably did not include all the landmasses that existed at that time.  In the eastern hemiphere,   

on either side of the Paleo-TethysOcean, there were continents that were separated from the supercontinent.  These continents   

were North and South China, and a long "windshield-wiper"-shaped continent known as Cimmeria.  

 Cimmeria consisted of parts of Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, Indochina and Malaya. It appears to have rifted away from  

 the Indo-Australian margin of Gondwana during the LateCarboniferous - Early Permian.  Together with the Chinese continents,   

Cimmeria moved northwards towards Eurasia, ultimately colliding along the southern margin of Siberia during the late Triassic   

Period.   It was only after the collision of these Asian fragments that all the world's landmasses were joined together in a   

supercontinent deserving of the name "Pangea".