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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 Proterozoic Eon was a very tectonically active period in the Earth's history. Oxygen changed the chemistry allowing for extensive geological changes. Volcanism was also extensive resulting in more geologic changes. The late Archean Eon to Early Proterozoic Eon corresponds to a period of increasing crustal recycling, suggesting subduction.
The first conifers evolved during this period, then dominated the terrestrial landscape. The Permian ended with at least one mass extinction, an event sometimes known as "the Great Dying", caused by large floods of lava (the Siberian Traps in Russia and the Emeishan Traps in China). This extinction was the largest in Earth's history and led to ...
There are seven continents in our world today. But 250 million years ago, those continents may have been one giant supercontinent called, Pangaea. How did it break up into the world we know today?
Contributing to Pangaea's popularity in the classroom, its reconstruction is almost as simple as fitting together the present continents bordering the Atlantic ocean like puzzle pieces. [4] For the period before Pangaea, there are two contrasting models for supercontinent evolution through geological time.
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.
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 Mesozoic Era [3] is the era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods.It is characterized by the dominance of gymnosperms such as cycads, ginkgoaceae and araucarian conifers, and of archosaurian reptiles such as the dinosaurs; a hot greenhouse climate; and the tectonic break-up of Pangaea.