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Pangaea was C-shaped, with the bulk of its mass stretching between Earth's northern and southern polar regions and surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa and the Paleo-Tethys and subsequent Tethys Oceans. Pangaea is the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.
Laurasia (/ l ɔː ˈ r eɪ ʒ ə,-ʃ i ə /) [1] was the more northern of two large landmasses that formed part of the Pangaea supercontinent from around , the other being Gondwana. It separated from Gondwana 215 to 175 Mya (beginning in the late Triassic period) during the breakup of Pangaea, drifting farther north after the split and finally ...
First phase of the Tethys Ocean's forming: the (first) Tethys Sea starts dividing Pangaea into two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana.. The Tethys Ocean (/ ˈ t iː θ ɪ s, ˈ t ɛ-/ TEETH-iss, TETH-; Greek: Τηθύς Tēthús), also called the Tethys Sea or the Neo-Tethys, was a prehistoric ocean during much of the Mesozoic Era and early-mid Cenozoic Era.
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 ]
The period is bracketed between the Permian–Triassic extinction event and the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, two of the "big five", and it is divided into three major epochs: Early, Middle, and Late Triassic. [11] The Early Triassic, about 252 to 247 million years ago, was dominated by deserts in the interior of the Pangaea supercontinent.
Those groups apparently evolved in completely different environments. [13] A significant sea-level drop at the end of the Permian led to the end-Capitanian extinction event. The cause for the extinction is disputed, but a likely candidate is an episode of global cooling, which transformed a large amount of sea-water into continental ice. [14]
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.
Pangaea was formed by the convergence of multiple continental masses and later broke apart to form two primary continents, Laurasia and Gondwana As the Jurassic (201–145 Ma) started, Pangaea began to break up into two continents , Gondwana and Laurasia , marking the beginning of the separation of Scotland and North America.