Abstract
There were two major kinds of Pennsylvanian-age tropical swamps: coal swamps, represented by most coal seams, and clastic swamps, commonly associated with coal as roof shale or sandstone floras. Such environments were part of depositionally-complex lowlands that also included non-swamp habitats. In general, the Pennsylvanian-age coal and clastic swamps were dominated by non-seed (lower vascular, spore-producing) plants, and the mesic, non-swamp vegetation was characterized by seed-plant (pollen-producing) dominance. On occasion, some drier-site kinds of vegetation are preserved, providing a glimpse of other kinds of plants in the lowland regions of the tropical belt; among these are the earliest known conifers (Scott and Chaloner, 1983) in the Middle Pennsylvanian.
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