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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 ...
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.
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.
The last period in which the continental landmasses were near to one another was 336 to 175 million years ago, forming the supercontinent Pangaea. The positions of continents have been accurately determined back to the early Jurassic , shortly before the breakup of Pangaea. [ 6 ]