About 541 million years ago, the distribution of land and sea was much different than what we know. All of this took place long before the creation of Pangea.

At this time of the Cambrian, during the first phase of the Paleozoic, the Iapetus Ocean separates North America from South America and Africa which was welded together, the whole called Gondwana. The Rheic Ocean separates the African coast from the Baltic continent. Other oceans, such as the Panthalassa and the Paleotethys cover a very large area that separates North China and Siberia.