Serpukhovian Age

What happened during this time?

Biological

• Study on the Paleozoic floras from North America and Europe indicate that leaf shape diversity (=disparity) peaked during the mid-Carboniferous (Boyce and Knoll 2002, Boyce 2005)

• Diversification of plants after this point did not affect the diversity of leaf shapes (disparity).

• It is possible to conclude that plants had exhausted their potential for evolving novel leaf traits by this time and diversity and disparity were unlinked after this point

Geophysical

• Sea levels were moderate throughout this age Carboniferous, but the seas rose steadily through most of the Sepukhovian, 

• Sea levels drop rather sharply at the end of the Age, with the onset of icehouse conditions and the beginnings of the Pennsylvanian Ice Age (Grossman et al. 2002; Mii et al. 2001). 

• At about this same time, the connection between the Rheic and Paleotethys Oceans closed as Gondwana met and sutured to Laurussia (North America plus Baltica) to form Pangaea.

  • This resulted in partial thermal isolation of the Paleotethys, which became a great semi-tropical bay.  The climate, which had been fairly equable throughout most of the Mississippian, became more strongly zonal.