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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 continents that had drifted away from Rodinia drifted together again during the Paleozoic: Gondwana, Euramerica, and Siberia/Angara collided to form the supercontinent of Pangea during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, some 350 million years ago. Pangea was a short-lived supercontinent; it began to break apart again in the early ...
Pangaea was fractured by widespread faulting and rift basins during the Triassic—especially late in that period—but had not yet separated. The first nonmarine sediments in the rift that marks the initial break-up of Pangaea, which separated eastern North America from Morocco , are of Late Triassic age; in the United States , these thick ...
Pangea began to break up about 220 million years ago, in the early Mesozoic (late Triassic period). As Pangea rifted apart a new passive tectonic margin was born, and the forces that created the Appalachian, Ouachita, and Marathon Mountains were stilled. Weathering and erosion prevailed, and the mountains began to wear away.
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]
Over tens of millions of years, as the familiar story goes, these giant hunks of rock slowly split apart, breaking up at a rate of just a millimeter — a little more than the thickness of a ...
Pangaea's supercontinent cycle is a good example of the efficiency of using the presence or lack of these entities to record the development, tenure, and break-up of supercontinents. There is a sharp decrease in passive margins between 500 and 350 Ma during the timing of Pangaea's assembly.
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.