RECONSTRUCTING PALEOEQUATOR
FIELD RECONSTRUCTION 01 / EURAMERICA
A forest before
the familiar.
Enter an equatorial coal swamp when trees were clubmosses, the air carried more oxygen, and no flower had ever opened.
WASD TO MOVE · MOUSE TO LOOK · E TO EXAMINE
SCIENTIFIC SCOPE
A site-specific reconstruction based on fossil evidence. Colors, sounds, and animal behavior remain informed hypotheses.
SPECIMEN 01 / 06
ARBORESCENT LYCOPSID
Lepidodendron
“scale tree”
EVIDENCE NOTE
EXPEDITION RECORD
Field log
COAL FOREST / MOSCOVIAN STAGE
APPROX. 309 MILLION YEARS BEFORE PRESENT
METHODOLOGY / READING
What we know.
What we infer.
Reconstruction choices
This is not a generic “prehistoric jungle.” It represents a wet, lowland peat-forming habitat in equatorial Euramerica during the Middle Pennsylvanian. Plant communities varied across space and time; this walk compresses a plausible local mosaic into a traversable field site.
Fossils preserve anatomy and association better than color, movement, or sound. Those qualities are conservative inferences, not observations. Atmospheric oxygen estimates also vary by model; the display uses a rounded value rather than false precision.