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At the start, continents were just about in the same place as they are today. The entire Quaternary period is considered an Ice Age because of Antarctica.
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It spanned the transition between a globally very warm climate with relatively high sea levels and dominated by reptiles to a world of polar glaciation, very different zones of climate and mammalian dominance.
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Last portion of the "Age of Dinosaurs" but new dinosaurs were also introduced during this time. The breakup and dispersion of Pangea continued.
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The supercontinent Pangea split apart. Many dinosaurs lived during this time, carnivores hunted down the herbivores. Oceans were full of fish, squid and coiled ammonites and other creatures.
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Some natural disaster (unsure on what it was) caused the extinction of over 90% of earth's species during this period. Following that event came a time of great change and rejuvenation.
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The permian diversification of the early amniotes into the ancestral groups of the mammals, turtles, lepidosaurs, and archosaurs. The world during this period was dominated by two continents known as Pangea and Siberia surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa.
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Famous for it's vast swamp forests. Such swamps produced the coal from which the term "Carboniferous", or "carbon-deriving", is derived.
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During this period, two major animal groups colonized the land. First, the tetrapods then the arthropods. There were three continental landmasses. North America and Europe were covered with water near the equator, a portion of Siberia lay to the North and a composite continent of South America, Africa, Antarctica, India and Australia dominated the Southern Hemisphere.
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Underwater life thrived during this period. Continental land masses were low and sea levels were rising which led to rich shallow sea ecosystems with new ecological niches.
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During this period, the area north of the tropics was almost entirely ocean and most of the world's land was collectively in the Southern supercontinent of Gondwana.
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Most major groups of animals first appear during this time period in the fossil record. This event is sometimes called the "Cambrian Explosion," because of the relatively short time over which this diversity of forms appears.
