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View of Earth, 356 million years ago timebar 356 million years ago

brown square Reconstructing the past
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Earth
356 million years ago

Carboniferous (Mississippian)

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Reconstructing ancient Earth
spacer image These remarkable figures are produced by C.R. Scotese and the PALEOMAP project. Geologists call these illustrations paleogeographic reconstructions, because they illustrate the reconstructed geography of our Earth at some time in the past.
spacer image Making a paleogeographic reconstruction begins by examining several lines of evidence including: paleomagnetism, magnetic anomalies, paleobiogeography, paleoclimatology, and geologic history. By combining all available evidence, geologists are able to construct paleogeographic maps, such as these, that interpret how the geography might have appeared at a specific location and time in the past. Paleogeographic maps are continually being refined as more evidence is collected.
spacer image To find out more about how paleogeographic reconstructions are made visit the PALEOMAP project site.

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What’s going on here?

  • In the Devonian we saw colliding plates build the northern Appalachian Mountains. During the Carboniferous Period (in North America we break this Period into the Mississipian and Pennsylvanian Periods) the collision between supercontinent Gondwana Euramerica intensifies. Mountain building lifts the southern Appalachians. Huge sheets of rocky crust are thrust westward, deep into the interior of the Euramerican continent, building the Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma.

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  • Learn more about this time period at the PALEOMAP project site.
  • Learn more about geologic time.
  • Learn more about plate tectonics.

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Scotese, C. R., 1997. Paleogeographic Atlas, PALEOMAP Progress Report 90-0497, Department of Geology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, 37 pp.
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http://www.nature.nps.gov/grd/usgsnps/pltec/sc356ma.html
This page was last updated on 12/16/98