Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
An image of Afro-Eurasia, the largest landmass on Earth. A landmass, or land mass, is a large region or area of land that is in one piece and not noticeably broken up by oceans. [1] [2] The term is often used to refer to lands surrounded by an ocean or sea, such as a continent or a large island. [3] [4] In the field of geology, a landmass is a ...
Animation of the break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea and the subsequent drift of its constituents, from the Early Triassic to recent (250 Ma to 0).. This is a list of paleocontinents, significant landmasses that have been proposed to exist in the geological past.
The concept that the continents once formed a contiguous land mass was hypothesised, with corroborating evidence, by Alfred Wegener, the originator of the scientific theory of continental drift, in three 1912 academic journal articles written in German titled Die Entstehung der Kontinente (The Origin of Continents). [11]
Like most breakups, the separation of continents is not a quick and painless process.. Take the supercontinent Gondwana, for example. Some 180 million years ago, the landmass separated from what ...
It covers roughly 539 million years. During this period continents drifted apart, but eventually collected into a single landmass known as Pangea, before splitting again into the current continental landmasses. [citation needed] The Phanerozoic is divided into three eras – the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic.
According to modern definitions, a supercontinent does not exist today; [1] the closest is the current Afro-Eurasian landmass, which covers approximately 57% of Earth's total land area. The last period in which the continental landmasses were near to one another was 336 to 175 million years ago, forming the supercontinent Pangaea .
Eurasia (/ j ʊəˈr eɪ ʒ ə / yoor-AY-zhə, also UK: /-ʃ ə /-shə) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. [3] [4] According to some geographers, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. [4]
Asia (/ ˈ eɪ ʒ ə / ⓘ AY-zhə, UK also / ˈ eɪ ʃ ə / AY-shə) is the largest continent [note 1] [10] [11] in the world by both land area and population. [11] It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, [note 2] about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area.