Australian freelance illustrator Richard Morden has put together a whimsical and surprisingly accurate map of Pangaea, the massive supercontinent that dominated the Earth over 200 million years ago. With the caption, "Our world long ago with lands joined together, when first appeared beasties of fur and of feather," the map features an assortment of animals that belonged to the era.
Illustration by Richard Morden; the poster is available for purchase here.
The Pangaean supercontinent, along with the interior Tethys Ocean, existed about 200 to 250 million years ago, what would have been the Triassic period. The landmass was created from the collision of the two major continents, Gondwana and Laurussia.
Geophysicist Jesper Dramsch explains further:
We're looking at a time after the Perm-Triassic extinction. It took another 30 million years for life to redevelop into it's beautiful diverse complexity and it was the start of an era. The dinosaurs inhabited Earth. They're not quite drawn to scale but that's artistic freedom. We can find Ichthyosaurus South-East of the lettering Tethys Ocean, which was a highly succesful marine predator. Down in "Antarctica" South of Pangaea you can find a shark-like lifeform. In case you didn't know, yes sharks are some animal that happens to be around a little longer.
On land we can find the first known flying reptile, the pterosaurs, just between Europe and North America. The other species on two or four legs resemble quite a few images I found of Proterosuchus, Cynognathus, Coelophysis and the famous Plateosaurus.
H/t via It's Okay to be Smart.