The Carboniferous-Permian transition records an important shift from the Middle Paleozoic Icehouse climate system to the Mesozoic Greenhouse climate system, and a rich fossil record documents how life adapted to this marked change in global climate. Because the Carboniferous-Permian interval was Earth’s last icehouse-greenhouse transition prior to the Quaternary, the study of these adaptations, and their impacts on terrestrial ecology, offers unique insight into current climate change. This interval spans an especially critical time in the evolution of tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates): this record preserves the origin and diversification of the ancestors of modern amphibians and amniotes (i.e., those with a cleidoic/amniotic egg, including mammals and reptiles), the origins of the first truly terrestrial ecosystems, and fragmentation of dense coal-forming swamps characteristic of the Carboniferous. Tetrapod adaptations to these environmental stresses are thought to be important factors in their diversity, including the proliferation of tetrapods particularly well-adapted for living in semi-arid to arid climates as well as novel ecological innovations including the origin of complex feeding strategies (e.g. durophagy, omnivory, herbivory and hypercarnivory) and the occupancy of new niches (e.g. fossoriality, arboreality, and semi-aquatic).
This special volume will spotlight recent themes in our understanding of the relationship between global climate change in the Carboniferous-Permian transition, the concurrent evolution of tetrapods, and the broader ecological changes in flora and fauna that shaped the tetrapod world at the time. We are particularly excited about submissions which investigate the role of Carboniferous-Permian climate change in ecosystem turnover using quantitative or stratigraphic approaches, in anatomical or phylogenetic studies of Carboniferous-Permian tetrapods (especially those relating to phylogenetically controversial groups such as diadectomorphs, parareptiles, varanopids, and recumbirostran “microsaurs'' and other ‘lepospondyls’), and evolutionary studies relating anatomy, function, and diversity in novel ways.
Finally, this special volume is dedicated to the research of Dr. Dave S Berman, Curator Emeritus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in honor of his long career collecting and studying vertebrate fossils from the Carboniferous and Permian of North America and Europe.
Authors may consider the suggested key themes below when preparing manuscripts:
- Systematic and anatomical studies of stem and crown-group tetrapods and tetrapod assemblages of the Carboniferous and early Permian
- Phylogenetic and evolutionary studies on the origins and early radiations of tetrapod groups (e.g. amniotes).
- Paleoecological studies on Carboniferous and Permian tetrapods, including but not limited to ecomorphological studies and large scale paleoecological analyses detailing faunal and floral changes.
- Paleoclimate studies across the Permo-Carboniferous and their relations to faunal changes (e.g. “Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse”).
