Oligocene and Miocene
From the Late Cretaceous to the Present rifts separated Africa from South America and then India, Australia, and Antarctica. North America rifted away from Europe. Then the rifted masses of old Gondwana, Africa, India, and Australia, moved northward towards Eurasia, closing the Tethys Ocean and forming the great Alpine-Himalayan mountains. As the process continues, a new super continent appears to be in the near geologic future, centered about the North Pole.
Southwestern North America intercepts the East Pacific Rise and a great extensional event, the Basin and Range orogeny begins. Orogeny continues in the Mediterranean region and India nears its junction with southern Asia.
Paleogeographic globes
020 Ma
Tectonics, Sedimentation, Paleogeography of North Atlantic Region
027 Ma
015 Ma
1st Order Global Tectonic Features
030 Ma
020 Ma
010 Ma
Link to other time periods
Cambrian
Ordovician
Silurian
Devonian
Mississippian
Pennsylvanian
Permian
Triassic
Jurassic
Early Cretaceous
Late Cretaceous
Eocene
Present
