https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth/#105

Not sure if this has been posted here before. You can step back the years to see what the Earth was like.

Nice

sibeen said:

https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth/#105

Not sure if this has been posted here before. You can step back the years to see what the Earth was like.

B) thanx

sibeen said:

https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth/#105

Not sure if this has been posted here before. You can step back the years to see what the Earth was like.

That link never posted here before. Love the slow rotation, the easy movement by mouse, the modern country outlines, ability to switch off clouds etc. I wish I could produce maps of that quality.

Some suprises. At 105 million years ago. Cretaceous.

• Is that a continent in the middle of the South Pacific? Or ocean? Or what?
• Africe and South America, despite being adjacent, are not one continent. What is normally considered to be a single Gonwana continent has been split into 6 separate continents in this visualisation.
• One the other hand, Laurasia is displayed as a single continent stretching from Malaysia via the Bering connection through to Honduras. I have not seen that before.
• Europe is split into six main separate Islands, three of which became Spain, Scandinavia and Scotland. That’s not too surprising, Laurasia is normally shown split.

Pangea supercontinent is given as 240 million years ago.Ditto Triassic.

• The whole of the land really is illustrated as a single continent.
• The equator goes through the USA from Baja California to New York (quite a twist). to Morocco.
• Shallow inland sea between greenland and Scandinavia.

Jurassic is 170 million years ago

• Depicted as three continents. Antarctica is still at the south pole.
• One continent Australia to Madagascar. One continent Africa, S America, N America. That is different to the normal exclusion of N America from Gondwana.
• Last continent Laurasia/Eurasia France to Borneo.

At 20 million years ago

• Much like the present day, obviously
• Britain’s outline unrecognisable and attached to France and Ireland.
• Amazon River an inland sea
• Florida underwater

At 35 million years ago

• No Red Sea
• Persian Guld connects to Mediterranean
• Britain’s outline recognisable again.

At 50 million tears ago

• A lot of shallow seas, eg. separating Antarctica into more than ten separate islands.
• India just a whisker off hitting Asia.
• Persian Gulf open wide

At 66 million years ago

• Australia near Antarctica
• Greenland attached to Canada.

Lots of good stuff there. I don’t know how reliable it is. I had previously thought that Gondwana was a single continent and Laurasia more a collection of islands, but this has Gondwana splitting up early, with N America still attached. Laurasia here was a chain of islands through Europe, but attached by the Bering Strait, which i didn’t expect at all.

Antarctica is the boring continent for movement. It was supposed to have a tropical climate during at least part of the Mesozoic, but here it sits resolutely at the South Pole even back as far as 300 million years ago.