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Gondwana (/ ɡ ɒ n d ˈ w ɑː n ə /) [1] was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent.The remnants of Gondwana make up around two-thirds of today's continental area, including South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Zealandia, Arabia, and the Indian subcontinent.
In the early Ordovician, around 480 Ma, the microcontinent Avalonia—a landmass incorporating fragments of what would become eastern Newfoundland, the southern British Isles, and parts of Belgium, northern France, Nova Scotia, New England, South Iberia, and northwest Africa—broke free from Gondwana and began its journey to Laurentia. [32]
The Cretaceous is characterized by warm global temperatures caused by the high amounts of carbon dioxide and possibly methane greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This caused a lack of permanent ice coverage in the polar regions, though the carbon dioxide level dropped between 115 and 66 million years ago (mya), possibly allowing some permanent ice cover.
Te Wāhipounamu (Māori for "the place of greenstone") is a World Heritage Site in the south west corner of the South Island of New Zealand.. Inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1990 and covering 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 sq mi), the site incorporates four national parks:
The cartography of New Zealand is the history of surveying and creation of maps of New Zealand. Surveying in New Zealand began with the arrival of Abel Tasman in the mid 17th century. [ 1 ] Cartography and surveying have developed in incremental steps since that time till the integration of New Zealand into a global system based on GPS and the ...
Detail from a 1657 map showing the western coastline of Nova Zeelandia (on this map, north is at the bottom). The first European visitor to New Zealand, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, named the islands Staten Land, believing they were part of the Staten Landt that Jacob Le Maire had sighted off the southern end of South America.
Its flood basalt mostly covers South Africa and Antarctica, but portions extend further into southern Africa and into South America, India, Australia and New Zealand. [ 3 ] Karoo-Ferrar formed just prior to the breakup of Gondwana in the Lower Jurassic epoch, about 183 million years ago; [ 4 ] this timing corresponds to the early Toarcian ...
The natural history of New Zealand began when the landmass Zealandia – today an almost entirely submerged mass of continental crust with New Zealand and a few other islands peaking above sea level – broke away from the supercontinent Gondwana in the Cretaceous period. Before this time, Zealandia shared its past with Australia and Antarctica.