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The geography of the continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean was the first evidence suggesting the existence of Pangaea. The seemingly close fit of the coastlines of North and South America with Europe and Africa was remarked on almost as soon as these coasts were charted.
Asia and Europe are considered separate continents for historical reasons; the division between the two goes back to the early Greek geographers. In the modern sense of the term "continent", Eurasia is more readily identifiable as a "continent", and Europe has occasionally been described as a subcontinent of Eurasia. [68]
He proposed that the continents had once formed a single landmass, called Pangaea, before breaking apart and drifting to their present locations. [32] Wegener was the first to use the phrase "continental drift" (1912, 1915) [5] [18] (German: "die Verschiebung der Kontinente") and to publish the hypothesis that the continents had somehow ...
On the other hand, submerged areas occasionally divided continents: the Turgai Strait separated Europe and Asia from the Middle Jurassic to the Oligocene and as this strait dried out, a massive faunal interchange took place and the resulting extinction event in Europe is known as the Grande Coupure.
The concepts of Europe and Asia as distinct continents date back to antiquity, but their borders have historically been subject to change. For example, to the ancient Greeks , Asia originally included Africa but they classified Europe [ 5 ] as separate land.
The geology of Europe is varied and complex, and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary. Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from ...
European interest in the Sahara Desert stems from its two aspects: the almost continual daytime sunshine and plenty of unused land. The Sahara receives more sunshine per acre than any part of Europe. The Sahara Desert also has the empty space totalling hundreds of square miles required to house fields of mirrors for solar plants. [127]
As the Triassic ended, Pangaea was breaking up into separate continents again. Rift valleys formed along the east coast as the North American, European and African plates diverged. [58] This process created rifts down the east coast to Florida. [47] One of these rift valleys was inundated with ocean water and became the young Atlantic Ocean.