Did they ever establish where on the planet Beast Wars takes place? Rewatching "Fallen Comrades" and they cover a lot of ground in such a short period of time.

 

It'd be natural to assume at least the Axalon landed somewhere in Africa, but the presence of what seems to be Velociraptor and T-Rex fossils makes it a bit confusing as it doesn't seem like those species were known to live around there.

I'd be curious to know what the staff had to say, if they even thought about it.

 

I'd have to agree with @Novaburnhilde. I think it's natural to assume the Axalon landed somewhere in Africa.

"Fallen Comrades" I think actually gives us one of the best indicators of about where they are on Earth, with a map behind Terrorsaur as he reports the location of the crashed stasis pod. While the positions of some of the continents I don't think is entirely accurate to how it's believed the continents moved around, the interesting thing about this map is that it appears to take a few million years of continental drift into consideration, with Africa much closer to Asia (and even seems to have land connecting part of Africa to south-east Asia). The stasis pod is indicated to have crashed somewhere in the middle of Asia, north of where Africa is located on that map. And then, the Ark is supposed to have crashed in Oregon (according to the G1 comics). So, for the most part, I'd have to say Beast Wars took place in/around Africa and Asia, eventually including a little of North America as well.

 

Did Pangea split up late in the Transformers universe?

 

Best not to think to much about this one, as on this version of prehistoric Earth, Mount St. Hilary and Stonehenge are close enough that animals are able to travel from the one to the other in a relatively short amount of time.

Edit: Tfwiki brings up this topic in the "continuity errors" section of for The Agenda: Part 3: "This episode calls into sudden question the location of the Maximal and Predacon bases. The events of "Code of Hero" seem to place the series firmly somewhere in Africa, where early Humanity evolved; the templates for the Maximals' beast modes (gorillas, cheetahs, rhinos) would seem to back this up. However, the Ark is traditionally seen to have crashed in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. If this is the case, the Maximals pursued Megatron across the Atlantic Ocean and over an entire continent! The early humans still appear before any theoretical "crossing of the Atlantic" could have taken place." - The Agenda (Part III) - Transformers Wiki

 

I think you're misremembering the geography at play there. It was quite a trek to the Ark from the Axalon/Pred base in BW, to the point where Blackarachnia needed to build a flying machine in secret just to get there, so it's clearly not in comfortable walking distance. (the Maximals did drag their ship salvage there, but at that point Optimus had a truck mode, and again no time frame is given) We don't know where Stonehenge is in relation to the Axalon. It's presumably close, since the mountain they were walking to when they discovered it was in the distance from the bridge to their base, but we also don't know how far said bridge was from the base. (Cheetor ran there, as did Rhinox, but they're also robots so they are faster/have range well beyond normal animals) Regardless, even if Stonehenge is near the Maximal base, the Maximal base is clearly not near the Ark.

Not to mention the speeds of characters in BW is wildly inconsistent. It takes Waspinator, Terrorsaur, Rhinox, Cheetor and Rattrap nearly a whole episode to get to Tigatron's pod, and Megatron gets there in seconds. The distances could all be 1:1 accurate doesn't mean shit when the characters move as fast as the plot needs them.

 

Geography and...Most things in Beast Wars are all over the place. Characters travel at the speed of plot, so it's a bit difficult to figure out where exactly anything is exactly.

The geography also doesn't make sense for Dinobot and Megatron's beast modes. It's not unlikely that the Maximal beast mode templates could all be in the same general area for scanning and the insects/arachnids could definitely have been there for Preds, but the Dinosaur fossils are in the wrong place (Velociraptor probably lived in what became Northern China and Mongolia, while Tyrannosaurus lived in the region of North America). There are a couple of African dinosaurs that Megatron's beast mode could have been, if the setting of most of the conflict really was supposed to be Africa, but I don't know about Dinobot.

Of course, the discrepancies in animal population distribution and fossil locations could be explained away by the Vok, but still.

 

Yeah, I think this is something where we just have to allow "creative license". I always thought Dinobot was probably more like a Utahraptor - found in North America (but during the show they called him a Velociraptor) it still doesn't "fit" with the African theme.

 

take this in context, bw was in an era where tf was all but a sunken ship. Mainframe was trying to make a buck, not necessarily a strong cannon and for what ever reason, TF branding let them run wild. You have modern mammals along side of early hominids, while hitting up stone hedge in the first episode. Excellent character development and story line, just not much attention to details... like gorillas swinging from trees, which always irritated me. Orangutans swing, gorillas cn climb, but silverbacks are to heavy for vines to support them.

point is that BW was littered with inconsistencies

 

Here's the map I mentioned earlier. I've labeled the continents what I believe they're supposed to be, although I'm not certain about India and Australia, since that's not where they should be.

 

TBF, it was Optimus that swung from a vine. Perhaps he just had limited understanding of gorillas.  

The main geographical inconsistencies come from the fact that Mainframe had a set cast of characters with predetermined alt modes by Kenner, and had to make all these animals appear in the same place if not the same time, lest a more convoluted explanation for where the DNA scanners got these samples from need be concocted. (If such an explanation would even make sense itself)

 

Incidentally I also decided to stop and look up which bugs the insect Preds would most likely actually be.
Scorponok could be an emperor scorpion, which actually makes sense with his coloration and size of his claws.
Tarantulas could be a King Baboon spider.
But I don't think Waspinator has the right appearance to be any African wasp.