fossil fule formed by the remains of trees in swamps
Answers
Answer:
A slightly different alchemy resulted in the planet's vast coal deposits, many of them in the United States. But the plants that produced them were a lot bigger, and even more bizarre and beautiful than diatoms.
Coal formed from the dead remains of magnificent trees, ferns, and other primitive plants that lived in lush swamp forests during the Carboniferous period, 360 to 286 million years ago, long before a single dinosaur roamed the land. Back then, the various continents we know today were positioned very differently. For most of the period, Laurentia (ancient North America) and Baltica (ancient Europe) were pretty much a single landmass located near the equator. The climate was warm and humid year-round—in other words, perfect for the proliferation of plant life, especially pteridophytes, or plants that reproduce by spores.
Not surprisingly, under such ideal conditions, size was a major factor in the evolution of Carboniferous plants. Some plants reacted to competitive pressures by becoming taller, while others adapted to life beneath these giants. Great swamp forests grew in lowland areas, dominated by gigantic arborescent plants that were very different from the flowering trees and conifers found in today's tropical, temperate, and boreal forests.
The most imposing plants in these wet forests were colossal lycopods, the ancient relatives of modern club mosses such as Lycopodium, which today generally grow just a few inches tall. The tree-sized lycopods of the Carboniferous soared to 130 feet tall. These were truly primitive-looking creatures. The evidence suggests that the largest lycopods had a main trunk with a shaggy crown of dichotomous, or occasionally bifurcating, branches. Their leaves were long and grasslike, and their reproductive structures were spore-bearing cones. Their trunks contained very little secondary wood; instead, the plants were supported by a thick, barklike periderm that enclosed soft, spongy tissue. Without enough water to keep the internal cells fully expanded, the plants would have collapsed under their own weight. As the climate of Euramerica began to change toward the end of the Carboniferous, the swamplands began to dry up, and the large lycopods disappeared, in geological terms, almost overnight.
Second in height only to the great lycopods was another group of pteridophytes, magnificent tree ferns. Growing to 65 feet tall, with large, compound fronds, these were even more impressive than their descendants, the cyatheas and dicksonias, tree ferns that survive today. Unlike the lycopods, ferns diversified and increased in numbers when the Carboniferous came to a close. In fact, they apparently were so abundant in at least some later Jurassic floras that they might well have been the dominant herbaceous plants on land—imagine a brontosaur straining its enormous neck to graze on the tasty frond of a 60-foot-tall fern. Today, ferns continue to flourish, numbering just over 10,000 species worldwide.
Explanation:
PLZ mark as brainliest
Answer:
FOSSIL FUELS FORM. After millions of years underground, the compounds that make up plankton and plants turn into fossil fuels. Plankton decomposes into natural gas and oil, while plants become coal. Today, humans extract these resources through coal mining and the drilling of oil and gas wells on land and offshore.