noting or pertaining to a period of the Paleozoic Era, including the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian periods as epochs, occurring from 345 million to 280 million years ago.
(lowercase) producing carbon or coal.
The period of geologic time from about 360 to 286 million years ago. The term is used throughout the world, although this period of time has been separated into the Mississippian (lower Carboniferous) and Pennsylvanian (upper Carboniferous) in the United States. During this time, widespread swamps formed in which plant remains accumulated and later hardened into coal.
See Chart at geologic time
1790–1800; < Latin carbōn- (stem of carbō ) coal + -i- + -ferous
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
According to the team, Mazon Creek fossil locality is one of the most important windows into life in the late Carboniferous, producing a wide range of fascinating plants and animals.
From Science Daily ● May 17, 2024
The fossil was identified as a temnospondyl, a predecessor to modern amphibians that survived over a 200 million year duration spanning from the Carboniferous to the Triassic periods.
From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2024
Carboniferous is now applying for permission to test its strategy from the Environmental Protection Agency.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 22, 2023
Texas’ ancient outcrops record broad swaths of the last 300 million years, including Carboniferous coal swamps, dinosaur-filled floodplains and Cenozoic savannas.
From New York Times ● Jul. 17, 2023
Perhaps if one less dragonfly had drowned in the Carboniferous swamps, the intelligent organisms on our planet today would have feathers and teach their young in rookeries.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Our burning of the liquefied remains of carboniferous forests melts glacial ice that fell as snow in the Pleistocene, raising sea levels for a future Anthropocene.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 20, 2019
I miss those days, but I’m still looking forward to the three or four temperate days that our present carboniferous hellscape has to offer before the chill rolls in.
From Slate ● Sep. 2, 2016
It takes us from reimagined scenes of the carboniferous forests, with giant horsetails, ferns and giant dragonflies, to Duncan Campbell's film of John DeLorean's attempt to build his futuristic gull-wing car in Northern Ireland.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 6, 2012
The partners took over a money-losing coal company and started acquiring leases on vast carboniferous acreage.
From Time Magazine Archive
To interpret rocks, there needs to be some means of correlation, a basis on which you can tell that those carboniferous rocks from Devon are younger than these Cambrian rocks from Wales.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
