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In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. [1] [2] [3] However, some geologists use a different definition, "a grouping of formerly dispersed continents", which leaves room for interpretation and is easier to apply to Precambrian times. [4]
Dicroidium zuberi, an Early Triassic plant from Pangaea (present-day Argentina) The four floristic provinces of the world at the Permian-Carboniferous boundary, 300 million years ago. Pangaea existed as a supercontinent for 160 million years, from its assembly around 335 Ma (Early Carboniferous) to its breakup 175 Ma (Middle Jurassic). [3]
Banksia, a grevilleoid Proteaceae, is an example of a plant from a family with a Gondwanan distribution The adjective "Gondwanan" is in common use in biogeography when referring to patterns of distribution of living organisms, typically when the organisms are restricted to two or more of the now-discontinuous regions that were once part of ...
Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1 million are insects—but it has been estimated there are over 7 million in total. Animals range in size from 8.5 millionths of a metre to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long and have complex interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs .
Map of Pangaea with modern continental outlines. The supercontinent cycle is the quasi-periodic aggregation and dispersal of Earth's continental crust.There are varying opinions as to whether the amount of continental crust is increasing, decreasing, or staying about the same, but it is agreed that the Earth's crust is constantly being reconfigured.
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 degree of certainty to which the identified landmasses can be regarded as ...
Insects make up the vast majority of animal species. [14]Chapman, 2005 and 2009 [9] has attempted to compile perhaps the most comprehensive recent statistics on numbers of extant species, drawing on a range of published and unpublished sources, and has come up with a figure of approximately 1.9 million estimated described taxa, as against possibly a total of between 11 and 12 million ...
The classification of living things into animals and plants is an ancient one. Aristotle (384–322 BC) classified animal species in his History of Animals, while his pupil Theophrastus (c. 371 –c. 287 BC) wrote a parallel work, the Historia Plantarum, on plants. [7]