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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 break-up of Rodinia also resulted in the opening of the long-lived Paleo-Asian Ocean between Baltica and Siberia in the north and Tarim and North China in the south. The closure of this ocean is preserved in the Central Asian Orogenic Belt , the largest orogen on Earth.
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.
During the time of the supercontinent Pangea, the Iberian plate was joined to Armorica (Northern France). During the break-up of Pangea, in the early Cretaceous, the Bay of Biscay started opening around 126 Ma and completed by 85 Ma.
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.
"Two hundred million years ago, our planet looked very different from what it does today. It was entirely covered by sea, which surrounded one single supercontinent we call Pangaea. And then, Pangaea began to break up. Life was cast adrift on fragments of land, and these fragments eventually became our seven continents.
The opening of the North Atlantic Ocean is a geological event that has occurred over millions of years, during which the supercontinent Pangea broke up. As modern-day Europe (Eurasian Plate) and North America (North American Plate) separated during the final breakup of Pangea in the early Cenozoic Era, [1] they formed the North Atlantic Ocean.
The break-up was the result of the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar igneous province, one of the Earth's most extensive large igneous provinces (LIP) c., but the oldest magnetic anomalies between South America, Africa, and Antarctica are found in what is now the southern Weddell Sea where initial break-up occurred during the Jurassic c.