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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 ...
The extreme cooling of the global climate around 717–635 Ma (the so-called Snowball Earth of the Cryogenian period) and the rapid evolution of primitive life during the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian periods are thought to have been triggered by the breaking up of Rodinia or to a slowing down of tectonic processes. [8]
The supercontinent Rodinia began to break up 870–845 Ma probably as a consequence of a superplume caused by mantle slab avalanches along the margins of the supercontinent. In a second episode c. 750 Ma the western half of Rodinia started to rift apart: western Kalahari and South China broke away from the western margins of Laurentia ; and by ...
Before it split into the continents we know today, Earth was home to just a single landmass, or "supercontinent," called Pangea. Over tens of millions of years, as the familiar story goes, these ...
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.
Pangea broke apart after 70 million years. The supercontinent was torn apart through fragmentation, which is where parts of the main landmass would break off in stages. There were two main events that led to the dispersal of Pangea. The first was a passive rifting event that occurred in the Triassic period.
The continents that had drifted away from Rodinia drifted together again during the Paleozoic: Gondwana, Euramerica, and Siberia/Angara collided to form the supercontinent of Pangea during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, some 350 million years ago. Pangea was a short-lived supercontinent; it began to break apart again in the early ...
Pangaea was completely assembled by the Permian except for the Asian blocks. The supercontinent was centred on the Equator during the Triassic and Jurassic, a period that saw the emergence of the Pangaean megamonsoon. [26] Heavy rainfall resulted in high groundwater tables, in turn resulting in peat formation and extensive coal deposits. [27]