North America, a long time ago

[Lingon]

I got a rather random map idea, and couldn't stop thinking about it, so I began working on it today. It will depict the North American continent as it looked some 90 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period. I found (well, followed a link on Wikipedia) this amazing site with maps tracking Earth through 600 million years:
Global Paleogeography

I have no idea how accurate they are, or if some kind of accuracy even is possible for these huge spans of time or if they are just speculative, but I decided to trust dr. Ron Blakey and his impressive 20 years of research, and use his reconstruction of the Cretaceous continents as my starting point. I ran it through G.Projector to get an Azimuthal Equidistant version, and since I'll be painting this map by hand I drew what I saw on screen:


That's in A4 size, the finished will be twice as big. I just wanted to get a reference that doesn't require my computer to be on while I paint.

Then I began with the paper effect. Just slapped watercolor randomly on some heavy A3 paper, but I'm quite happy with it.


Feel free to use it if you like it. I have a bigger sized scan, about 10000x7000 pixels, if someone wants it.

Next I'll copy the longitudes and latitudes and landmasses from the sketch, and then comes the fun part