ecosystems dominated by lycopods, calamites, herbaceous ferns, and lower-statured seed ferns by arborescent marattialean fern and medullosan seed fern communities. Additionally, the detritivore-rich trophic structure of the Middle Pennsylvanian was supplemented by major exophytic and endophytic herbivores feeding on live tissues of the new arborescent taxa (Labandeira and Phillips 1996, 2002), consistent with an insect extinction. This new Late Pennsylvanian wetland ecosystem, replete with new taxa of plants and insects, persisted into the Permian in some paleocontinents; but it was rapidly replaced in Euramerica by gymnosperm-dominated communities, as peat-swamp–associated insects gave rise to taxa occurring in drier habitats with mineralic soils (Gastaldo et al. 1996, DiMichele et al. 2001).