Land and sea during the Jurassic

The picture of today's Earth is only a snapshot, for the continents are constantly drifting apart. The animation on the right slowly turns the clock of earth's history back 180 million years, to the Jurassic period. Even then, the former supercontinent Laurasia had already broken up. At the fracture points, shallow shelf seas flooded the land.

The Jurassic Sea was one such sea. With the exception of a few islands, it covered much of Europe. The picture on the left shows the rough distribution of land and sea, During the Lower Jurassic, today's fossil site Holzmaden was approximately 150 kilometres away from the nearest coast.