Carboniferous extinctions

Graptolites are a group of colonial animals, members of the subclass Graptolithina within the class Pterobranchia. These filter-feeding organisms are known chiefly from fossils found from the Middle Cambrian (Miaolingian, Wuliuan) through the Lower Carboniferous (Mississippian). A possible early graptolite, Chaunograptus, is known from the Middle Cambrian. Recent analyses have favored the idea that the living pterobranch Rhabdopleura represents an extant graptolite which diverged from the rest of the group in the Cambrian.

Lepidodendrales (from the Greek for "scale tree") or arborescent lycophytes are an extinct order of primitive, vascular, heterosporous, arborescent (tree-like) plants belonging to Lycopodiopsida. Members of Lepidodendrales are the best understood of the fossil lycopsids due to the vast diversity of Lepidodendrales specimens and the diversity in which they were preserved; the extensive distribution of Lepidodendrales specimens as well as their well-preservedness lends paleobotanists exceptionally detailed knowledge of the coal-swamp giants’ reproductive biology, vegetative development, and role

Calamitaceae is an extinct family of equisetalean plants related to the modern horsetails, known from the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Some members of this family like Arthropitys attained tree-like stature, with heights over , with extensive underground rhizomes. They were largely found in wetland environments.

Annularia is a form taxon, applied to fossil foliage belonging to extinct plants of the genus Calamites in the order Equisetales.

Iniopterygiformes (Originally spelled Iniopterygia and sometimes informally abbreviated as "iniops") is an extinct order of cartilaginous fish known only from the Carboniferous period of the United States. Iniopterygians are characterized by large, superficially wing-like pectoral fins positioned upwards behind the head, from which the name of the group (translated as "nape fin") is derived. Iniopterygians are also noted to possess proportionally large skulls and eyes, armor plates composed of dentin, and "tooth-whorls" of fused teeth. Their elongated pectoral fins bore large, denticle-covered

The Lyginopteridales are an extinct group of seed plants known from the Paleozoic. They were the first plant fossils to be described as pteridosperms (a polyphyletic group sometimes referred to as "seed ferns") and, thus, the group on which the concept of pteridosperms was first developed; they are the stratigraphically oldest-known pteridosperms, occurring first in late Devonian strata; and they have the most primitive features, most notably in the structure of their ovules. During early and most of middle Pennsylvanian times the Medullosales took over as the more important of the larger pter

Strophomenida is an extinct order of articulate brachiopods which lived from the lower Ordovician period to the mid Carboniferous period. Strophomenida is part of the extinct class Strophomenata, and was the largest known order of brachiopods, encompassing over 400 genera. Some of the largest and heaviest known brachiopod species belong to this class. Strophomenids were among the most diverse and abundant brachiopods during the Ordovician, but their diversity was strongly impacted at the Late Ordovician mass extinction. Survivors rediversified into new morphologies in the Silurian, only to be

Alethopteris is a prehistoric plant genus of fossil pteridospermatophytes (seed ferns) that developed in the Pennsylvanian (around ). thumb|left|Alethopteris florentina De Stefani, 1901, Natural History Museum University of Pisa thumb|Alethopteris, at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.|left thumb|Alethopteris sp.

Ornithoprion is an extinct genus of cartilaginous fish. The only species, O. hertwigi, lived during the Moscovian stage of the Pennsylvanian subperiod, which spanned from . Its fossils are preserved in black shales from what is now the Midwestern United States. The study of Ornithoprion was performed primarily via x-ray imaging, and at the time of its discovery it represented one of the best known holocephalans of the Paleozoic era. The classification of the genus has been the subject of debate due to its unique anatomy, and it is now placed in the order Eugeneodontiformes and the family Caseo