I was wondering if there is any application that will allow you to choose a date and display the configuration of continents at that time.
I was watching something on the Discovery Channel about the Chicxulub impact and it was making references to the Pacific Northwest and Mongolia, and I wanted to see a map that showed whether these places were in the same places that they are now, and I kept thinking, was that before or after the Western Interior Seaway.
Here’s the link for Ron Blakely’s very pretty paleogeographic maps: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/global_history.html
There’s also a Google Earth plugin that displays them, which I just found: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=643492&site_id=1#import
Oops, missed the edit window, but this was actually the site I was thinking of that has the really pretty paleogeographic maps: http://www.scotese.com/
Although the links I put above might be more useful for what you’re looking for.
Thanks. I’ll check those out.
So, from the first link, it looks like this is the one – http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/Late_Cret.jpg
The modern continents are recognizable, although they’re much closer together – the Atlantic Ocean is pretty narrow – India is still free floating in the Indian Ocean. And the Western Interior Seaway is in fact in existence.
Has it been observed yet that an Ice Age follows hard on a continental convergence? The Rodinia supercontinent came slightly before (in geologic time) the Varangian glaciatio; the Pangaea one slightly before the Permian glaciation. And the consolidation of Eurasia, with Africa, Arabia, India and Indochina impacting, and North America functioning to close in the Arctic, preceded the Pleistocene Ice Age.
Here’s an animatedpic…
