Knowra Pangaea Pangaea The supercontinent that assembled roughly 335 million years ago and broke apart from about 200 million years ago, uniting nearly all land into one landmass.
Panthalassa : The single world ocean that surrounded Pangaea, predecessor of today's Pacific Ocean. The vast outer ocean against which Pangaea's margins and subduction zones were set.
Rodinia : A supercontinent assembled about 1.1 billion years ago, an earlier turn of the supercontinent cycle. Its dispersal supplied many of the fragments that later built Pangaea.
Gondwana : The southern Pangaea fragment: South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia joined as one. Pangaea's southern half, whose breakup scattered matching fossils and rocks across southern seas.
Alfred Wegener : The German meteorologist who named Pangaea in 1912 and argued the continents had drifted. He proposed the supercontinent decades before a mechanism could explain it.
Atlantic Ocean : The ocean that opened between the Americas and Eurasia–Africa as Pangaea split. The most visible product of the breakup, still widening today.
Tethys Ocean : The ocean that opened along Pangaea's eastern side in the late Paleozoic and Mesozoic. Its opening marked the first stage of Pangaea's long dismemberment.
Laurussia : The continent formed when Baltica and Laurentia collided about 430 million years ago. The northern half of Pangaea, joined to Gondwana in the final collision.
Laurasia : The northern Pangaea fragment: North America, Europe and Asia after the supercontinent split. Pangaea's northern half, separated from Gondwana by the opening Atlantic.
Continental drift : The early twentieth-century hypothesis that continents move across Earth's surface. Pangaea was drift's central claim, rejected until a driving mechanism was found.
Central Atlantic Magmatic Province : One of Earth's largest flood basalt provinces, erupted as Pangaea's central rift opened. Its eruptions around 201 million years ago accompanied the initial breakup.
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