Cenozoic Era · Paleogene Period
Earth 50 Million Years Ago: A Warm World and India Hits Asia
What Earth looked like 50 million years ago: the warmest climate of the last 66 million years, forests near the poles and India colliding with Asia.
Spin it in 3D and move through timeMap: Ancient maps: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs (Scotese & Wright 2018), CC BY 4.0 · Natural Earth.
Around 50 million years ago, in the Early Eocene, Earth was at its warmest since the dinosaurs died. Forests grew in the Arctic, where fossils of crocodile relatives and turtles have been found on Ellesmere Island, and Antarctica had no ice sheet.
India was colliding with Asia, beginning to raise the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau. Australia was still joined to Antarctica.
Mammals were diversifying fast: the first horses were dog-sized, early primates lived in the forests, and the ancestors of whales, such as Pakicetus, still walked on land in what is now Pakistan.
Events of the time
India meets Asia
50 million years ago · Himalaya and Tibet
The collision is still going on: India pushes north about 4–5 cm a year, raising the Himalaya and causing earthquakes across Asia.
▶ Watch it happen on the globe
Part of the Cenozoic Era & The Quaternary Ice Ages.