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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 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] Seamounts accreted in eastern Australia as parts of the New England orogen reveal the hotspot history of Panthalassa. [15]
Gondwana formed part of Pangaea for c. 150 Ma [31] Gondwana and Laurasia formed the Pangaea supercontinent during the Carboniferous. Pangaea began to break up in the Mid-Jurassic when the Central Atlantic opened. [32] In the western end of Pangaea, the collision between Gondwana and Laurasia closed the Rheic and Paleo-Tethys oceans.
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 ...
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.
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.
They split in two groups, with one returning to Gondwana (and stayed there after Pangaea split) while the other staying in Laurasia (until further descendants switched to Gondwana starting from the Jurassic). In the early Eocene, a peak in global warming led to a pan-Arctic fauna with alligators and amphibians present north of the Arctic Circle.
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 ]