Samuel Wendell Williston's 1916 rendition of an ancient environment and animals in Permo-Carboniferous time. The Permo-Carboniferous refers to the time period including the latter parts of the Carboniferous and early part of the Permian period. Permo-Carboniferous time, about 300 million years ago, was a period of great glaciation. The widespread distribution of Permo-Carboniferous glacial sediments in South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Antarctica and Australia was one of the major pieces of evidence for the theory of continental drift. This image has been color enhanced.