Where did dinosaurs live?
Paleontologists now have evidence that dinosaurs lived on all of the continents. At the beginning of the age of dinosaurs (during the Triassic Period, about 230 million years ago) the continents we now know were arranged together as a single supercontinent called Pangea. During the 165 million years of dinosaur existence this supercontinent slowly broke apart. Its pieces then spread across the globe into a nearly modern arrangement by a process called plate tectonics. Volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain building, and sea-floor spreading are all part of plate tectonics, and this process is still changing our modern Earth. Drawing showing relative positions of the continents during the age of dinosaursRelative positions of continents during the age of dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs lived on every continent, including Antarctica. This does not mean that dinosaurs lived in polar wastelands. During the time of the dinosaurs, the world was much warmer, and Antarctica had forests. Dinosaurs also lived in many different Mesozoic environments, including deserts, forests, and coastal swamps.
