A CARBONIFEROUS SWAMP
A Coal Seam in the Making

Plants no doubt preceded animal forms in this invasion of the land, but the animals probably followed up the plant emigration {23} very closely. The first problem that the plant had to solve was the problem of some sustaining stiff support to hold up its fronds to the sunlight when the buoyant water was withdrawn; the second was the problem of getting water from the swampy ground below to the tissues of the plant, now that it was no longer close at hand. The two problems were solved by the development of woody tissue which both sustained the plant and acted as water carrier to the leaves. The Record of the Rocks is suddenly crowded by a vast variety of woody swamp plants, many of them of great size, big tree mosses, tree ferns, gigantic horsetails and the like. And with these, age by age, there crawled out of the water a great variety of animal forms. There were centipedes and millipedes; there were the first primitive insects; there were creatures related to the ancient king crabs and sea scorpions which became the earliest spiders and land scorpions, and presently there were vertebrated animals. LCwYqSZyiEBJzU0AEgLQAwEA0dFeC4vxLEmrPaPoMnzyfGLcx9Yg6PMsl4s3Cdf9