Talk:Carboniferous rainforest collapse

Thanks!

Thank you Gents (whomever you are) for creating this article! It really helps putting the evolutionary story of Palaeozoic tetrapods into an ecological context! Petter Bøckman (talk) 15:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Step Changes?

"Collapse occurred through a series of step changes. First there was a gradual rise in..." The author can't have it both ways. Was the first stage a step change or a gradual rise ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.105.218 (talk) 15:53, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Current Relevance

Full disclosure, I absolutely see and agree with what the original author is trying to say, and would support the content in the article in principle, but the way that it is worded currently doesn't conform to policy. I've added tags ({{who}}, {{vague}}, {{citation needed}}, etc) to the places that I think need to be reworded or referenced.

I'm not sure the second paragraph can be salvaged at all; it's the part that most seems most directly speculative. Remember too that (unfortunately) anthropogenic climate change remains controversial among a vocal group of people. This doesn't mean we should shy away from making the comparison, but rather that we must be absolutely sure that we can defend the verbiage from nay-sayers. They will say that's OR (right now it reads like it), the will say it's speculative (right now it reads like it), they will point to weasel words (some environmental groups say ...), they will hammer the crap out of the section with WP policy and they'll be right.

If we want this content here we need to rewrite it so that it's better sourced, less vaguely worded, and when it speculates that it attributes the speculation to someone notable that it makes sense to quote in this context. Eniagrom (talk) 20:54, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

In the sea

This section is terribly inaccurate, and I'm not even sure why it needs including on this page at all. It gives the impression that radiolarians and diatoms died out during this event, they didn't. The White Cliffs of Dover are Cretaceous chalk. and the rest seems utterly confused. second thoughts. rather than tag it, I think it would be better to just remove it.Lacunae (talk) 16:39, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Impact section needs updated

The serial impact hypothesis is no longer considered valid. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030113.shtml https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2006AM/finalprogram/abstract_112026.htm http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFM.P31A1384E All come to the same conclusion that it was not a serial impact. It was a possibile explanation in the guidebook referenced for the alignment but there was little data backing it up. I would advise that this section be removed, more sources added to back up the serial impact hypothesis (peer reviewed journals), or an update be done to reflect current data. I would highly recommend removing it as data no longer supports serial impact. --Userkv8031 (talk) 17:26, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. This is WP:FRINGE. For example: The existence of a periodic cycle itself was contentious until 2014 when Melott and Bambach analysed two independent data sets with increased resolution, confirming distinct extinction peaks every 27 million years and specifically, the CRC falls within the maxima of the 27 Myr periodicity cycle (±1.26 Myr).[23]

This is saying that the Nemesis (hypothetical star) hypothesis is no longer contentious because the publication of single research paper has overturned decades of research. Zyxwv99 (talk) 21:02, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Updates Needed

It feels like this entire article could use some updating with more current information. The overall feel of the article makes this event sound like an extinction event on par with the end of the Permian. I think most paleontologists would not consider it anything close to an event of that magnitude. And perhaps part of that is the confusion between the CRC and the larger Carboniferous-Permian transition. Any other thoughts. --Stocksdale (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Intoductory Section

I have a problem with this sentence: "The CRC has been identified as one of the two most devastating extinction events to have affected plant life.[2]" The paper that is linked (Source number 2 in references) talks about the "Carboniferous-Permian transition" which is different that the "Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse". The CRC is a brief event occurring around 305 mya. The "Carboniferous-Permian transition" is a larger transition period centered around the 298 mya. I wondered if it would be better if the sentence went "The CRC can also be viewed as part of a broader transition of plant species called the "Carboniferous-Permian transition" that continued into the early Permian. This larger transition over a period of 10 million years has been referred as one of the two biggest extinction events for plant life."--Stocksdale (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Overly Technical

The Article is extremely technical. Unless you have atleast a college education you will not be able to understand it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrVentureWasRight (talk • contribs) 18:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Relevance section

There were some problems with the Relevance section. First, the relationship of this event to present day fossil fuels was stated in such a way that made it seem that the reason we have coal deposits is because this event killed off the plants. There's no evidence of such a direct-cause effect relationship. While plant life of that brief portion of the Carboniferous did contribute to coal deposits, this didn't "cause" peat deposition, more likely it caused it to stop (but that would also need to be sourced before it went in the article).

In the deforestation subsection (in Relevance), the connection between this to present day rainforest collapse is unsourced and very tenuous. We don't know why this event happened. We do know why modern rainforests are disappearing--they're being cut down by humans. That was also unsourced, and contained editorializing. It's also covered by WP:CRYSTAL. Geogene (talk) 21:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Coal forests did continue after the event

One of the major problems I had with this article was that to a casual reader they might infer that Carboniferous Rainforests were nonexistent after the event. It is clear that these rainforests continued but were slightly different in composition. I tried to edit the beginning to help make that fact a bit clearer --Stocksdale (talk) 17:26, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Length?

The article says:

Though the exact speed and nature of the collapse is not clear, it is thought to have occurred relatively quickly in geologic terms, only a few thousand years at most.

Really? Do we have a reference for this speed? AxelBoldt (talk) 03:44, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

"Newsham, USA"

Isn't the Newsham site in Northumberand, UK?Wetman (talk) 06:18, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Recent revert

Elmidae has reverted my edit with the comment "Undid revision 1106681430 by Dudley Miles (talk) contradicts sourced material in body. Don't add lede-only material, and don't remove the consensus view because of misapplying statements". The text I deleted was "Following the event, coal-forming tropical forests continued in large areas of the Earth, but their extent and composition were changed. The collapse had no effect in the region of Cathaysia to the east (which mostly corresponds to modern China), where Carboniferous-like rainforests would persist until the very end of the Permian, around 252 million years ago." There is no mention of Cathaysia in the body, which states that rainforests disappeared by the Kasimovian, not that they persisted until the end of the Permian, as the text I deleted says. The statements I deleted are unreferenced and contradict the text in the body, some of which is referenced and some not. I did not misapply any statements. I will restore my edit unless I am shown that I am wrong. It is correct that I should have added the referenced text in the body, not the lead, and I am happy to do so. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:33, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dudley Miles: I could have sworn that this reference used to be in the article, which gives an excellent overview of the temporal pattern of CR collapse in different regions (see Figure 2 for a schematic). However it clearly is not used, and doesn't seem to have been at any point... search me. In any case, would you agree that this source justifies the statement about temporal offsets between Euramerica and Cathaysia? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:49, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

References

• Elmidae. The article you cite says that plant extinction in the CRC was only regional. Brusatte says that it wiped out half of all plant families, implying that it was global. I am not clear what his sources are. He cites [1] and [2] for the climate during the period, but not specifically for the plant extinction. The question presumably is how far the regional hypothesis is widely accepted. This 2018 paper supports Brusatte, saying "This ‘rainforest collapse’ culminated in what is considered one of two mass extinction events evident in the plant fossil record." Can you investigate further as I have very limited access to scientific papers. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:31, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

That's not necessarily a contradiction, is it? An extinction event can be one of, or the, major extinctions for one group of organisms, but still represent a minor event when put into the context of extinction events across all groups. Vascular plants being relative latecomers in evolutionary history, they necessarily missed two of the biggest whoppers, and even the post-Carboniferous big extinctions impacted marine species and animals much more than plants. I remember reading that all of the big mass extinctions were relatively insignificant at the plant higher taxa level (families?) (although I couldn't tell you where that was). I suspect we can have both statements in the article (a minor extinction event, but one of the biggest for plants) and there would be no issue with that. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:21, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

There are several points I would query in your reply. 1. The article says that plant exinction was regional. I cited a source for saying that this is wrong and you reverted. I have now cited another source for saying that the CRC was one of the two major plant extinctions. It is important to clarify this in the article. 2. The sources do not specify vascular plants, but all plants. 3. It is not correct that they missed the first two whoppers. They were a major part of the land biota by the time of the Late Devonian extinction. 4. Plants are a major and crucial part of Earth's biota. I would strongly disagreed that one of the two major plant extinctions, which wiped out half of all families, can be described as a "minor extinction" overall. Dudley Miles (talk) 16:49, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Frankly I'm not too concerned about the minor/major classification, but I am about the temporal & spatial offset vs Cathaysia. Since we have available sources for the "major plant extinction" statement as well as the Cathaysia/Permian statement, how about we source those in the body and drop the more generic "minor extinction" statement? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:43, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

The 2007 Hilton and Cleal paper says "the dramatic floral turnover at the end of the Carboniferous representing a regional event rather than a global extinction episode". I have cited two papers which say it was a global extinction. I have no opinion which is right, but I do think we need supporting evidence for the 2007 paper before citing it against a 2018 paper and a 2022 book. Can you find other papers supporting the Cathaysia thesis? Dudley Miles (talk) 18:14, 28 August 2022 (UTC)