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Paleozoic Era · Carboniferous Period

Earth 300 Million Years Ago: Coal Swamps and an Ice Age

What Earth looked like 300 million years ago: tropical coal swamps, giant insects, ice sheets over southern Gondwana and Pangea almost complete.

Globe of Earth 300 million years ago with coal forests on the equator and ice over southern GondwanaSpin it in 3D and move through time

Map: Ancient maps: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs (Scotese & Wright 2018), CC BY 4.0 · Natural Earth.

Around 300 million years ago, at the end of the Carboniferous, vast swamp forests grew along the equator. Their buried wood became the coal of Europe and North America that later powered the Industrial Revolution.

Oxygen in the air was well above today’s 21%, perhaps 30% or more, which helped insects grow huge: the griffinfly Meganeura had a wingspan of about 70 cm. The first reptiles had appeared.

At the same time ice sheets covered southern Gondwana in the Late Paleozoic Ice Age, the longest of the last 500 million years. Gondwana and Laurussia had collided, and Pangea was nearly complete.

Events of the time

  • Coal swamp forests

    300 million years ago · Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Tree-sized club mosses and horsetails grew in tropical swamps; their buried remains became the coal of Europe and North America. The first reptiles have been found in hollow stumps here.

  • Pangea comes together

    300 million years ago · Appalachians, Atlas and Variscan mountains

    Gondwana collided with Laurussia, raising a mountain range as tall as the Himalaya along the join. Its worn-down roots are the Appalachians, the Atlas and the hills of Europe.

    ▶ Watch it happen on the globe

Part of the Paleozoic Era & The Cambrian Explosion.