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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 ...
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.
Birth of the Pacific plate 180 million years ago. In the Early Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea was surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa, the ocean floor of which was composed of the Izanagi, Farallon, and Phoenix plates. [6]
Pangaea's supercontinent cycle is a good example of the efficiency of using the presence or lack of these entities to record the development, tenure, and break-up of supercontinents. There is a sharp decrease in passive margins between 500 and 350 Ma during the timing of Pangaea's assembly.
Map of Earth during the Early Permian, around 285 million years ago, showing Central Pangean mountain range at equator. The Central Pangean Mountains were formed during the collision of Euramerica and northern Gondwana as part of the Variscan and Alleghanian orogenies, which began during the Carboniferous approximately 340 million years ago, and complete by the beginning of the Permian around ...
Palaeogeographical evidence contributed to the development of continental drift theory, and continues to inform current plate tectonic theories, yielding information about the shape and latitudinal location of supercontinents such as Pangaea and ancient oceans such as Panthalassa, thus enabling reconstruction of prehistoric continents and oceans.
After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to its present isolated location, causing the continent to develop a much colder climate. [2] The Antarctic plate is bounded almost entirely by extensional mid-ocean ridge systems.
The Pangean megamonsoon refers to the theory that the supercontinent Pangea experienced a distinct seasonal reversal of winds, which resulted in extreme transitions between dry and wet periods throughout the year. Pangea was a conglomeration of all the global continental land masses, which lasted from the late Carboniferous to the mid-Jurassic. [1]