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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 time span of the Phanerozoic starts with the sudden appearance of fossilised evidence of a number of animal phyla; the evolution of those phyla into diverse forms; the evolution of plants; the evolution of fish, arthropods and molluscs; the terrestrial colonization and evolution of insects, chelicerates, myriapods and tetrapods; and the ...
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.
Flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, spread during this period, although they did not become predominant until near the end of the period (Campanian age). [18] Their evolution was aided by the appearance of bees; in fact angiosperms and insects are a good example of coevolution.
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]
Pangea was formed about 400 million years ago as plates crashed together, creating massive mountains that scientists believe were as high as the Himalayas are today.
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.