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The opening of the North Atlantic Ocean is a geological event that has occurred over millions of years, during which the supercontinent Pangea broke up. As modern-day Europe (Eurasian Plate) and North America (North American Plate) separated during the final breakup of Pangea in the early Cenozoic Era, [1] they formed the North Atlantic Ocean.
Pangaea was C-shaped, with the bulk of its mass stretching between Earth's northern and southern polar regions and surrounded by the superoceanPanthalassaand the Paleo-Tethysand subsequent Tethys Oceans. Pangaea is the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.
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.
This causes the continents to push together to form supercontinents and was evidently the process that operated to cause the early continental crust to aggregate into Protopangea. [ 17 ] Dispersal of supercontinents is caused by the accumulation of heat underneath the crust due to the rising of very large convection cells or plumes, and a ...
Soon, Pangaea began to split up and North America began drifting north and westward. During the latter Jurassic, the floodplains of the western states were home to dinosaurs like Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, and Stegosaurus. During the Cretaceous, the Gulf of Mexico expanded until it split North America in half. Plesiosaurs and mosasaurs swam in ...
First phase of the Tethys Ocean's forming: the (first) Tethys Sea starts dividing Pangaea into two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana.. The Tethys Ocean (/ ˈ t iː θ ɪ s, ˈ t ɛ-/ TEETH-iss, TETH-; Greek: Τηθύς Tēthús), also called the Tethys Sea or the Neo-Tethys, was a prehistoric ocean during much of the Mesozoic Era and early-mid Cenozoic Era.
The supercontinent Pangaea in the early Mesozoic (at 200 Ma) surrounded by Panthalassa. The Pacific Plate began forming when the triple junction at the center of Panthalassa destabilized about 190 million years ago. Panthalassa, also known as the Panthalassic Ocean or Panthalassan Ocean (from Greek πᾶν "all" and θάλασσα "sea"), [ 1 ...
t. e. Plate tectonics (from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (tektonikós) 'pertaining to building') [1] is the scientific theory that Earth 's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. [2][3][4] The model builds on the concept of continental ...