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Pangaea or Pangea (/ p æ n ˈ dʒ iː ə / pan-JEE-ə) [1] was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. [2] It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana , Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million years ago, and began to break apart about 200 million years ...
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 .
The supercontinent Pangaea was rifting during the Triassic—especially late in the period—but had not yet separated. The first nonmarine sediments in the rift that marks the initial break-up of Pangea—which separated New Jersey from Morocco—are of Late Triassic age; in the U.S., these thick sediments comprise the Newark Supergroup. [44]
c. 180 Ma – Pangaea splits into two major continents: Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. c. 176 Ma – First stegosaurs. c. 170 Ma – First salamanders and newts evolve. Cynodonts go extinct. c. 167 Ma - First crown group mammals. [35] c. 165 Ma – First rays and glycymeridid bivalves.
The flow of heat will be concentrated, resulting in volcanism and the flooding of large areas with basalt. Rifts will form and Pangaea Proxima will split up once more in 400 to 500 million years. Earth may thereafter experience a warming period as occurred during the Cretaceous period, which marked the split-up of the previous Pangaea ...
He proposed that the continents had once formed a single landmass, called Pangaea, before breaking apart and drifting to their present locations. [32] Wegener was the first to use the phrase "continental drift" (1912, 1915) [5] [18] (German: "die Verschiebung der Kontinente") and to publish the hypothesis that the continents had somehow ...
The idea that a supercontinent existed in the early Neoproterozoic arose in the 1970s, when geologists determined that orogens of this age exist on virtually all cratons. [9] [failed verification] Examples are the Grenville orogeny in North America and the Dalslandian orogeny in Europe. Since then, many alternative reconstructions have been ...
Australia-New Guinea, having split from Pangea during the early Cretaceous, drifted north and, eventually, collided with Southeast Asia; Antarctica moved into its current position over the South Pole; the Atlantic Ocean widened and, later in the era (2.8 million years ago), South America became attached to North America with the isthmus of Panama.