PIX4633329: Earth 200 million years ago - Artist's view - Early Jurassic Earth - Earth seen at the beginning of the Jurassic, about 200 million years ago. The western hemisphere is representative, the north is up. The Pangee has just split, forming Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. This is how the western hemisphere of the Earth may have appeared 200 million years ago during the Early Jurassic period. North is at the top. During this period continental drift, driven by the massive forces of plate tectonics, had just begun to break the supercontinent of Pangea into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. In this image the nascent North American continent has just broken away from North Africa while South America and the rest of Africa remain joined as Gondwana. To the west in the global Panthalassa ocean are strips of land corresponding to the Wrangellia Terrane which later merged with western North America / Bridgeman Images