Dinosaur Islands of Europe

When Pangea started to break up, we lost more than just a couple of continents. The Panthalassa was a gigantic ocean and the Tethys was a bay of the supercontinent Pangea. When Pangea began to break up, the Tethys became a sea dividing the next two continents of Gondwana and Laurasia between 185 and 125 MA. These two continents moved away from each other and smaller pieces of Pangea have broken apart. The central mountains on Pangea connected Africa, Europe, and the eastern side of North America. During this time, these mountains began separating. It was essentially the Appalachian mountains which today run from Alabama up the eastern seaboard into Canada. Africa began to drift away and part of this mountain range was pulled apart. It also started the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean.

Somewhere along this time period, Africa broke off from South America, Australia, and Antarctica during the Jurassic period. It eventually bumped into Europe again closing the Tethys sea for a brief period. This volcanic activity happened especially along the lower regions of Europe from the pulling apart, bumping into, and again separating from Africa. The volcanic activity might have caused a massive die-off of bivalves moving into the Jurassic age. There was evidence of a great reef across this area at one time which might explain the lagoon theory. Africa again separated from Europe only being connected by the stretch of land now known as the middle east.

At the same time, there was a period of fluctuations when there were no polar ice caps causing the water levels to rise above normal. It has been suggested as much as 600 ft above current water levels. Looking at simulations of modern-day Europe, that much water rising would create islands out of the current mountain ranges. When Pangea broke up, it was a result of at least three different factors. There were the continents breaking up with loose pieces dragging away, water levels rising without polar ice caps, and volcanic activity happening because of the breakup. Any one of these would create the islands of the European archipelago.

When Laurasia began to break apart separating North America and Europe, that is when the land was stretched into the Islands of Europe. Several nations were re-arranged and actually made an archipelago of sub-tropic islands. So why is all this important to know? The dinosaurs that we know of today are the huge Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. We can easily see the evidence of these dinosaur paths across a continent like North America, but very little is known about the dinosaurs of Europe.

Many people wondered where they might have gone, but recent discoveries have provided a clue. All this bumping around the continents, volcanic activity along the subduction zones, and fluctuating of the ice caps made Europe a series of islands. They had dinosaurs from Pangea, but as these islands separated and moved apart…it created an island effect on the dinosaurs. The food chains were smaller, the diet was getting limited, and it is speculated that a lot of the fossils were lost in the movement. What they have found are smaller versions of the dinosaurs that we know of. They are sauropods the size of modern-day cows and therapods the size of turkeys or geese. Some have shown signs of developing aquatic capabilities that allowed them to swim from island to island!

As these islands moved apart and came back together, the water levels were rising and falling from the polar caps shrinking and coming back. This also creates something similar to our article on California and New Zealandia. It is very possible that evidence of the dinosaurs was washed away. California doesn’t really have dinosaur sites, but they do have petrified trees from 55 million years ago. We know that Zealandia was above water as recently as 40-60 million years which would give them time to have dinosaurs as well. Yet they haven’t found very many fossils from that time period.

Thanks to some observant geologists in Europe, they were able to find the skeletons of smaller dinosaurs in the area of central Europe. Dinosaur skeletons have been found in other regions of Europe as well, but we may never get the whole picture of what happened. It does give an interesting picture of the end of the dinosaur era. If the asteroid would have never happened, would all dinosaurs eventually shrink and become the pets of the modern-day world? Would mammals have ever dominated like they do today? We know from the end of the Carboniferous era that some environmental events would have brought about a change anyway. Perhaps that change was already happening when the asteroid hit.