Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The final stages of break-up, involving the separation of Antarctica from South America (forming the Drake Passage) and Australia, occurred during the Paleogene (from around (Ma)). Gondwana was not considered a supercontinent by the earliest definition, since the landmasses of Baltica , Laurentia , and Siberia were separated from it. [ 4 ]
The second major phase in the break-up of Pangaea began in the Early Cretaceous (150–140 Ma), when Gondwana separated into multiple continents (Africa, South America, India, Antarctica, and Australia). The subduction at Tethyan Trench probably caused Africa, India and Australia to move northward, causing the opening of a "South Indian Ocean".
The Gondwana supercontinent began to break up in the Middle Jurassic, about 167 million years ago. At that time, East Gondwana, comprising Antarctica, Madagascar, India, and Australia, began to separate from Africa. East Gondwana then began to separate about 115–120 million years ago when India began to move northward. [5]
The Karoo and Ferrar large igneous provinces (LIPs), in Southern Africa and Antarctica respectively, collectively known as the Karoo-Ferrar, Gondwana, [1] or Southeast African LIP, [2] are associated with the initial break-up of the Gondwana supercontinent at c..
Zealandia’s history is quite closely tied to the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, which broke up hundreds of millions of years ago. Zealandia followed suit—roughly 80 million years ago ...
As the break-up of Gondwana began in the south, the opening of the Indian Ocean initiated the closure of the Neo-Tethys. [ 1 ] Cimmeria was an ancient continent , or, rather, a string of microcontinents or terranes , [ 3 ] that rifted from Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere and was accreted to Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere .
The break-up of Gondwana left the resulting continents, including Zealandia, with a shared ecology. Zealandia began to move away from the part of Gondwana which would become Australia and Antarctica approximately 85 million years ago (Ma). By about 70 Ma, the break up was complete.
From the Triassic to the Early Jurassic, before the break-up of Pangaea, archosaurs (crurotarsans, pterosaurs and dinosaurs including birds) had a global distribution, especially crurotarsans, the group ancestral to the crocodilians. This cosmopolitanism ended as Gondwana fragmented and Laurasia was assembled.