It was a geologic period with a comparatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that shaped many shallow inland water bodies.

The Earth was ice-free, and forests stretched to the poles. Oceans and water bodies were populated with now-extinct aquatic reptiles, ammonites, and rudists, while dinosaurs remained to dominant on land.

Nevertheless, during this time, new groups of birds and mammals emerged. Birds became increasingly common and diverse. During the Early Cretaceous, flowering plants emerged and began to speedily diversify, becoming the leading group of plants across the globe by the end of the Cretaceous, coincident with the decrease and elimination of formerly widespread gymnosperm groups.

By the late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Million ago), the continents were startling to assume their broad contemporary alignment. The Americas were flowing westwards, making the Atlantic Ocean broaden. India was still in the initial stages of its northward journey, attached alongside Madagascar. Australia was still linked to the Antarctic fragment of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland. Manchuria and China were yet to bump with Siberia, and the continents of the northern hemisphere were, as yet, detached from their southern counterparts by a sinuous Tethys Ocean. Snaking up from Tethys, the Western Interior Seaway cut across the North American continent.

During the Late Cretaceous, the climate was warmer than now, although, throughout the period, a cooling tendency is clear. The tropics became reduced to equatorial regions, and northern latitudes experienced considerably more seasonal climatic conditions.

In the Late Cretaceous, the hadrosaurs, dromaeosaurs, ankylosaurs, therizinosaurs, spinosaurids, pachycephalosaurs, and ceratopsians experienced success in Western North America and eastern Asia. Tyrannosaurs dominated the large predator niche in North America. In the northern hemisphere, cimolodont, eutherians, multituberculates, and metatherians were the predominant mammals.

Near the end of the Cretaceous Period, flowering plants diversified. In temperate regions, recognizable plants like magnolias, sassafras, roses, redwoods, and willows could be found in abundance.

The Cretaceous ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction crisis, a significant mass extinction in which many groups, comprising non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and giant marine reptiles, died out.

Below is the map of North America 77 million years ago. According to this map, In the Late Cretaceous, the many contemporary U.S. states were beneath the waves of the Western Interior Seaway. It’s fascinating that elevations and water levels have changed that much throughout millions of years.

Nowadays, you can see many marine fossils in the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico that 77 million years ago were at the bottom of the Western Interior Seaway.

Now let’s fantasize. Let’s look at what the 2020 U.S. presidential election map would look like if the position of the continents had not changed in 77 million years.

This map looks pretty different from the map of Trumpland and Biden archipelago.

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The East African Rift System runs 3,000 km (1,864 miles) from Ethiopia to Mozambique. Two tectonic plates (the Somali and Nubian) move apart at 6-7 mm per year, or 0.24-0.28 inches. That’s roughly fingernail growth speed. You can’t see it happening without satellites and GPS tracking the motion.

Ethiopia’s Afar region gave us a rare glimpse in 2005. A 60-kilometer fissure opened up in just days. Some sections were 8 meters wide, exposing magma at the bottom. Rifting that normally takes millennia happened in days.

Look at the Red Sea for comparison. It widens 10 mm (0.4 inches) annually as Arabia drifts from Africa. That rift became an ocean. The East African Rift could do the same.

What Future Africa Might Look Like

Reddit user u/TheAssConsumer created this projection using plate movement data, showing Africa 10 million years ahead.

Today’s landlocked cities (Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Kampala) sit on coastlines in this scenario. Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea break off as an island.

Will it happen? Geologists debate this. Ken Macdonald at UC Santa Barbara points out that rifts stall. The Atlantic stopped spreading for millions of years before resuming. Even at steady rates, matching the Red Sea’s size needs 20-30 million years. The rift might just stop.

If seawater floods in, East African weather changes substantially. Ocean basins control temperature and moisture patterns regionally. Ethiopia and Kenya’s dry areas might get more rain, but stormier rain. Adding large water bodies destabilizes local climate.

The East African Rift is the world’s largest active rift. Earthquakes can hit magnitude 7.0. Mount Nyiragongo in the DRC sends lava through nearby communities when it erupts. Rivers change course as terrain shifts. The Congo Basin will rise or drop depending on how continental mass moves, stressing the rainforest.

Further north, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia face potential earthquake increases as pressure transfers through the Tell-Rif range.

The Afar region and Iceland are unique because mid-ocean ridge spreading is visible above water there. Elsewhere this happens kilometers deep, invisible to direct study.

The rift might become an ocean. It might stop and form rift valley lakes instead. Either way, East Africa occupies a tectonically active zone. This splitting has continued for millions of years and won’t stop on human timescales.

Comments?

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It’s hard to imagine now that once upon a time that the Scottish Highlands, the Appalachians, the Ouachita Mountains, and the Little Atlas of Morocco are the same mountain range, once connected as the Central Pangean Mountains.

During the Permian period, the Central Pangean were subjected to significant physical weathering, decreasing the peaks and forming many deep intermontane plains. By the Middle Triassic, the mountain sierras had been considerably reduced in size. By the beginning of the Jurassic period (200 mln years ago), the Pangean chain in Western Europe disappeared to some highland regions separated by deep marine basins.

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Mars is home to dizzyingly tall mountains and deep canyons. Olympus Mount is the tallest mountain in the Solar system. It’s about two and a half times taller than Mount Everest. The surface of Olympus Mons is geologically very young and the volcano may still be active. The Martian canyons called the Vales Marries are approximately the length of the entire continental United States and over three times as deep as the Grand Canyon. Like Venus and Mercury, Mars has impact craters off over the planet where meteors have fallen through the thin atmosphere to strike the surface.

Billions of years ago, the surface of Mars and Earth looked very similar. Although the Martian surface no longer holds any liquid water. Mars probably once had lakes and rivers, as well as a thick atmosphere like Earth. Why did Mars become a cold and waterless desert while life flourished on Earth? Knowing more about the history of Mars might also help us understand more about the past and future of Earth.

A topographic map of Mars

The distinctive red color of the Martian surface is because of the dust particles that coat the ground. Planet-wide dust storms can occur when high winds blow the dust into the air.

A geology map of Mars

The space race
Spacecraft exploration of Mars began in earnest during the 2Oth century Space Race when the United States and the Soviet Union competed to explore the Solar system with satellites and manned missions. Since then over 50 space missions have been launched toward Mas – about half of them successful. Some notable missions include the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, which collected the data used to design this geologic map. The Curiosity rover, a car-sized robot, is a recent addition to the planet. Curiosity is equipped with six independent controlled wheels, a robotic arm, and tools for analyzing Martian rocks.

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I’ve been comparing three major global geology mapping projects. They take very different approaches to showing Earth’s 4-billion-year rock record.

CCGM Geological Map of the World (1:35M Scale)

The Commission for the Geological Map of the World released its updated edition back in 2024. They worked with UNESCO and geological surveys from multiple countries to compile this.

What caught my attention is how much ocean floor detail they included. Many geology maps concentrate on land masses, but CCGM added bathymetric shading that really highlights underwater features. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge shows up clearly. So do the subduction zones around the Pacific Rim and various oceanic plateaus from volcanic activity.

The color coding follows geological time periods. Purples and pinks = Precambrian (anything older than 541 million years). Greens and blues = Paleozoic era. Yellows through oranges = Mesozoic and Cenozoic, right up to active volcanoes. You can also see which rocks are sedimentary, which are metamorphic, and which are igneous. Plus there’s data on 45 hotspots and features like thrust faults.

GDS Geologic Map of the World

Geologic Data Systems built their version by pulling from published surveys between 1:250,000 and 1:5,000,000 scale. They used SRTM30 elevation data for land, ETOPO1 for ocean depths, and Landsat imagery at 250m resolution as their base layers.

Here’s why I like this one: it comes as actual GIS files you can open in ArcGIS or QGIS.

For anyone doing spatial analysis or building custom maps, this is probably the most practical option. Import it, clip to your study area, overlay whatever else you need.

Macrostrat Interactive Geological Map

Macrostrat from UW-Madison works differently. Instead of one finished map, they built a database pulling from 200+ geological sources.

Click anywhere and you get bedrock info: formation name, lithology, age, plus links to papers about that unit. It connects to stratigraphic columns showing vertical rock sequences. Coverage is best for North America but expanding elsewhere.

You can switch between bedrock geology, stratigraphy, fossil localities from the Paleobiology Database, and other layers. They also made the Rockd app that uses your phone’s GPS to ID rocks in the field. Pretty useful when you’re hiking and wondering what you’re standing on.

The three projects serve different needs. Need authoritative reference? Go with CCGM. Working on GIS projects? GDS has the files. Want to explore interactively or check geology while traveling? Macrostrat and Rockd.

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Around 200 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, Pangaea started to rift and split into two smaller supercontinents, Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. Laurasia eventually fragmented into North America, Europe, and Asia, while Gondwana broke apart to form South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent.

The globe below, created by Lazaro Gamio, shows the breakup of Pangea.

This gradual separation of landmasses profoundly affected Earth’s climate, ocean currents, and the evolution of life. It played a crucial role in shaping the distribution of flora and fauna across the continents. The breakup of Pangaea is a cornerstone in understanding the dynamic nature of Earth’s crust and the interconnectedness of geological and biological processes over millions of years. It laid the groundwork for the diverse landscapes and ecosystems that we observe on the planet today.

We recommend checking out the following books if you’re eager to learn more about Earth’s past.

• Amazing Evolution: The Journey of Life
• Continental Drift: The Evolution of Our World from the Origins of Life to the Far Future

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Alfred Wegener thought this continental drift explained why the edges of South America and Africa looked like matching puzzle parts. He also showed similar rock structures and fossils on these two landmasses as evidence to back his continental drift theory. Then Pangea landmass slowly broke apart, finally forming the continents as they are today.

The data set below visualizes extension velocities at Earth’s major post-Pangea rift systems. Each circle depicts the rift velocity of one passive margin point in terms of circle color and size. The geologic time and the layout can be changed at the top of the screen.

Firstly, plate tectonics scientific theory hadn’t become popular until the 1960s. But as more data appeared over the years, including seafloor research, the tectonic theory began to gain traction.

So, according to modern plate tectonic scientific theory, our planet’s surface is made up of plates of rock that are slowly moving. Because of this continuous journey, nowadays’s Earth looks a lot distinctive from what it did millions of years ago.

According to the tectonic theory, the cycles of splitting apart and coming together occur because of subduction, which happens when tectonic plates meet with one another.

Now, it’s considered that Pangea was just one of many supercontinents to mass together and broke apart throughout geological history.

The precise number of supercontinents is widely discussed, but according to the Second Edition of Encylopedia of Geology, here are 5, including Pangea, widely recognized.

The Supercontinent Cycles:
Kenorland: 2.7-2.5 billion years ago
Nuna/Columbia: 1.6-1.4 billion years ago
Rodinia: 950–800 million years ago
Pannotia: 620-580 million years ago
Pangea: 325-175 million years ago

The interactive map below shows these supercontinent cycles through 1 billion years of tectonic plate movement in 40 Seconds.

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