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The Mississippian Period. By Haillie Rost and Jenna Gordon. The Mississippian Period Time Span. The time span of the Mississippian period was about 35 million years and it lasted from 320 million years ago to 360 million years ago.
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The Mississippian Period By Haillie Rost and Jenna Gordon
The Mississippian Period Time Span • The time span of the Mississippian period was about 35 million years and it lasted from 320 million years ago to 360 million years ago. • The Mississippian period was the start of part of the Carboniferous Period which got its name from the vast amount of coal being laid down in coal beds at that time. • At the end of the Mississippian period the Pennsylvanian period started which then brought the Carboniferous period to its end.
Continent Positions • Continents are starting to drift toward the 1 continent Pangea. North America finally came up from being underwater for a while.
Landforms • The Mississippian saw mountain building in what is now western North America. A glaciated Gondwana nears southern Euramerica and continues to collide with ancestral Europe, resulting in the HercynianOrogeny and great mountains in southern Europe. • The movement of the earth's crust resulted in the collision of continents to produce the supercontinent, Pangea and also caused eruptions along the fault lines.
Animal/Plant emergences/extinctions • During the Mississippian period the first winged insects appeared such as dragonflies with wingspans of as much as two feet. • Amphibians emerged approximately half way through the Mississippian period. • During the upper part of the Mississippian period Conifers plants appeared and remained constant throughout the rest of the periods • At the end of the Mississippian period the temperatures dropped therefore plants and animal’s numbers dropped as well.
Dominances • Plants were so abundant that they pumped oxygen into the air in enormous quantities. This permitted insects and other land-dwelling invertebrates to grow to enormous sizes. • Tetrapods were beginning to spread across the heavily-watered landscapes • Amphibians were beginning to occupy the land and insects, many of which grew to enormous sizes, were beginning to swarm everywhere. • Sharks, bony fishes, clams, brachiopods and ammonites dominated the oceans and the swamps were loaded with lobe-finned fishes.
corals Animals Foraminifera Branchiopods Echinoderms Bryozoas Hederelloids ammonoids
Plants Equisetales Lepidodendrales Lycopadiales Gymnosperm Medullosales
Climate, atmosphere • Average global temperatures in the Mississippian period were hot- approimately 20°C. • Nearing the end of the Mississippian period the temperatures lowered causing some effects to the animal’s and plant’s numbers • The atmosphere’s CO2 was roughly 2000ppm then rapidly dropped between the end of the Mississippian period and the Pennsylvanian period.
Major distinctive events • Dropped sea levels in the Devonian caused North America to emerge from the ocean. • The drop in sea levels also caused new animals to appear.
Bibliography • http://www.watersheds.org/earth/gtime02e.htm • http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_animals_and_plants_live_during_the_Mississippian_Time_Period • http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/carboniferous/carbtect.html • http://cuip.uchicago.edu/~fvaughn/illinois_eyes/timeperiod.htm#mississippian • http://news.uchicago.edu/images/assets/091221.coates5.jpg • http://www.lloydminsterheavyoil.com/mississippian.htm • http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/continents.html • http://wiki.answers.com/Q/In_the_mississippian_period_what_did_the_earth_surface_look_like_then
