Ever heard a man with double "R" for his middle names? He simply use Pangaea map with real world continent as reference. I guess you can't go wrong with making fantasy setting with alternate history overlay.
Ehm, if you're refering to Tolkien, whatever map he used - he only published - afaik - a corner of it, and it is only in the past decade that we know what the coastlines of Pangaea would have looked like, beyond the continent being vaguely lump-shaped
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that this is a bit of an apocryphic 'factoid', since there's no telling if it is or isn't, it'd be like pointing to a star in the sky and saying it's based on another star in the sky, there's no way of telling...