Early Jurassic Earth - Artist view
author: Walter B.Myers/Novapix
reference: t-glb99-00300
Image Size 300 DPI: 93 * 65 cm
This is how the western hemisphere of the Earth may have appeared 200 million years ago during the Early Jurassic period. North is at the top.
During this period continental drift, driven by the massive forces of plate tectonics, had just begun to break the supercontinent of Pangea into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south.
In this image the nascent North American continent has just broken away from North Africa while South America and the rest of Africa remain joined as Gondwana. To the west in the global Panthalassa ocean are strips of land corresponding to the Wrangellia Terrane which later merged with western North America.