Geology of Ohio terrestrial environment since the Permian. For instance, the main subdivisions of the Pennsylvanian: the Pottsville Group, Alleghany Group, Conemaugh Group and Monongahela Group, along with the Early Permian Dunkard Group, are each more terrestrial than the last. The region was situated inland, experiencing terrestrial erosion as the Proto-North American continent of Laurasia collided with Gondwana to form the supercontinent Pangaea. Rocks from the end of Paleozoic are best exposed in road cuts along I-77, between Canton and Marietta, I-77 from Cambridge to Bridgeport and cliffs on the Ohio River north of Marietta to East Liverpool. For 245 million years, spanning
Gondwana During the Devonian giant club mosses replaced the Baragwanathia Flora, introducing the first trees, and by the Late Devonian this first forest was accompanied by the progymnosperms, including the first large trees "Archaeopteris". The Late Devonian extinction probably also resulted in osteolepiform fishes evolving into the amphibian tetrapods, the earliest land vertebrates, in Greenland and Russia. The only traces of this evolution in Gondwana are amphibian footprints and a single jaw from Australia. The closure of the Rheic Ocean and the formation of Pangaea in the Carboniferous resulted in the rerouting of ocean currents which initiated an Ice House period.