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the current configuration of continents is unlikely the last which means the continents are still moving and will continue moving forever. supercontinents have formed several times in earth's history, only to be split off into new continents. For instance is inching towards asia, and the eastern part of africa is slowly coming off of the rest of the continent. In 300-400 million years geologists predict that there will be another supercontinent that will form. Many scientists believe that the supercontinent cycle is largely driven by circulation dynamics in the mantle. Heat formed in the mantle likely comes from radioactive decay of unstable elements, like uranium scientists don't agree on whether there are mini pockets of heat flow in the mantle, or if the entire shell is one big conveyor belt.

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https://www.famousscientists.org/alfred-wegener/

https://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/wegener-diaries/biography-alfred-wegener

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Lived 1880 - 1930.
Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift - the idea that Earth's continents move. Despite publishing a large body of compelling fossil and rock evidence for his theory between 1912 and 1929, it was rejected by most other scientists. It was only in the 1960s that continental drift finally became part of mainstream science.

Alfred Wegener: Beginnings

Alfred Wegener was born on November 1, 1880, in Germany's capital city, Berlin.

His father, Richard Wegener, was a classical languages teacher and pastor. His mother, Anna Wegener, was a housewife. The Wegener family of two adults and five children - Alfred was the youngest - was well-off financially.

Alfred was an intelligent boy. He received a conventional education at grammar school in Berlin, where his academic ability marked him for a university education.

He began university in Berlin in 1899, age 18, taking a variety of science classes. He specialized in astronomy, meteorology, and physics. In 1902, he began a PhD degree in astronomy. He spent a year at Berlin's famous Urania Observatory, whose purpose was (and still is) to bring astronomy to the public.

Alfred Wegener completed his PhD in 1905, age 24. Although now qualified to become a professional astronomer, he was worried that he might not discover anything new or interesting in astronomy. He believed he could make a greater contribution in meteorology - the study of weather and climate.

Alfred Wegener's Scientific Career

A first job and a world record
In 1905, Wegener started work as a scientist at a meteorological station near the small German town of Beeskow.

There, working with his older brother Kurt, he carried out pioneering work using weather balloons to study air movements. If there had been a Guinness Book of World Records in 1906, the Wegener brothers would have won the record for the longest continuous balloon flight ever: 52.5 hours in April of that year.

Greenland
Wegener was delighted to be appointed as the official meteorologist for the Danmark scientific expedition to Greenland, the world's largest island, which took place from 1906 to 1908. The expedition's principle aim was to map Greenland's unexplored northeast coast. During the expedition, Wegener made his mark by building Greenland's first meteorological station and taking a large number of atmospheric readings using kites and balloons.

The expedition's work in uncharted territory was dangerous - three expedition members died of starvation/exposure!

University Lecturer
Returning to Germany in 1908, Wegener became an associate professor in meteorology at the University of Marburg. There he quickly gained a reputation for giving lectures that made difficult topics easy for his students to understand.

In 1910, he published his first book: Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere. He also had the first inkling of the idea that would bring him both anguish and long-lasting fame: continental drift.

Continental Drift

Wegener looks at a map and sits up
Looking at a world map in 1910, Wegener noticed how the coastlines of eastern South America and western Africa seemed to fit together, rather like jigsaw pieces.

Publishing fossil and geological evidence
After further research, in 1911 Wegener learned that fossils of several species were present in both Brazil and western Africa. This evidence suggested to him that South America and Africa were in physical contact when the fossilized animals and plants were alive.

His study of geological data gave him evidence that similar rock formations existed on the two continents.

In 1912, age 32, Wegener delivered talks at German universities and published two papers proposing that Earth's continents moved. His work on continental drift then suffered two interruptions: a second expedition to Greenland, followed by the outbreak of World War 1 - Wegener was conscripted into the German Army.

Nevertheless, while recovering from a wound in 1915, he wrote and published his groundbreaking book: The Origin of Continents and Oceans, in which he discussed the movement of Earth's continents.

He proposed that many millions of years ago Earth consisted of a single great continent surrounded by ocean. Very slowly the land masses of this huge continent moved apart to form the continents we see today. Unfortunately, nobody took much notice of his proposal!

Today we recognize that Wegener's ancient continent truly existed. We call it by the name Wegener gave it - Pangaea.

More evidence and more book editions
In 1920, 1922 and 1929, Wegener published updated editions of The Origin of Continents and Oceans, adding more evidence each time for his idea that the continents move around the planet at very slow speeds. He also added further evidence he had gathered in Greenland, which showed that Greenland and North America were once linked.

He said he was not the first person to propose the movement of continents; others had also found evidence from fossils and rocks which strongly suggested continents now far apart were once joined - the American geologist Frank Bursley Taylor had published evidence in 1910 supporting the idea of continental drift. Wegener's work was independent of Taylors.

In 1920s America, people referred to continental drift as the Taylor-Wegener theory.

Geologists Reject Wegener's Ideas
Scientists who stray into another field can encounter difficulties, such as those encountered by physicist Luis Alvarez when he proposed a meteor impact had resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Wegener was an astronomer who had become a meteorologist. He was not a geologist and he found that a large majority of geologists were vigorously opposed to his ideas.

In compiling a huge volume of convincing evidence for Pangaea and continental drift he had made one or two small errors, and he also made one big error.

Although the rock and fossil evidence he reported should have been more than enough to convince skeptics that his theory was largely correct, Wegener tried to explain why continents move - and got this wrong!

Polflucht
Polflucht is German for pole flight. Wegener proposed that there was a geological force which pushed the continents away from Earth's poles towards the equator.

Geologists rightly told him this was untrue. Unfortunately they threw the baby out with the bathwater, rejecting Wegener's truly compelling evidence for continental drift. Moreover, they rejected work which today we recognize as a forerunner of the correct explanation of continental drift - plate tectonics, the idea that solid continents float on a fluid mantle.

"It is a strange fact, characteristic of the incomplete state of our current knowledge, that totally opposite conclusions are drawn about prehistoric conditions on Earth, depending on whether the problem is approached from the biological or the geophysical viewpoint."

The End

Wegener published what would be the final edition of his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans in 1929.

On an unknown day in mid-November 1930, Alfred Wegener died on his fourth expedition to Greenland. He was 50 years old.

He had been trying to resupply a remote camp in very bad weather. Temperatures had dropped as low as a deadly -60 °C (-76 °F). He supplied the camp successfully, but there was not enough food at the camp for him to stay there. He and a colleague, Rasmus Villumsen, took dog sleds to travel to another camp.

Wegener died on this journey, probably of a heart attack. Villumsen buried Wegener's body in the snow, marking his grave with skis. Villumsen then resumed his journey, but did not complete it. His body was never found.

In May 1931, Kurt Wegener discovered his brother's grave. He and other expedition members built a pyramid-shaped mausoleum in the ice and snow, and Alfred Wegener's body was laid to rest in it. The mausoleum has now, with the passing of time, been buried under Greenland's ice.

Alfred Wegener was survived by his wife, Else Köppen, whom he had married in 1913, and two daughters: Sophie Käte and Lotte.

"He was a person of flawless character, unadorned simplicity and rare modesty. At the same time, he was a man of action, who, in pursuing an ideal goal, achieved the extraordinary by means of his iron will power and tenacity while putting his life at risk.

Hans Benndorf, 1870 - 1953

Physicist and Seismologist

Alfred Wegener's Scientific Legacy

Today, we recognize that Wegener was right.

It was only in the 1960s, when the theory of plate tectonics was recognized as correct, that geologists finally accepted Wegener's continental drift theory and his concept of Pangaea were also correct. Wegener's ideas are now standard concepts in geology, taught to everyone who studies the subject.

Author of this page: The Doc
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Please use the following MLA compliant citation:

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Lived 1880 - 1930. Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift - the idea that Earth's continents move. Despite publishing a large body of compelling fossil and rock evidence for his theory between 1912 and 1929, it was rejected by most other scientists.

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this is greenland

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Germany

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Most scientist believe that Pangaea would have been very dry. For example in the text it says, "For instance, the interior of the continent may have been utterly dry, as it was locked behind massive mountain chains that blocked all moisture or rainfall" (Murphy 1). But people found coal deposits in the United States and Europe. These coal despotes show that Pangaea was actually lush, tropical rainforest like the amazon.

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about thirty million years ago earth was all one supercontinent called pangea and was surrounded by one ocean called panthalassa the reason for pangea's formation was plate tectonics which posits that the earth's outer shell is broken into several plates that slide of the mantle in the earth's rocky shell. Over the course of the planets 3.5 billion year history several other supercontinents have formed and changed and broken up which is caused by the churning and circulation of the earths mantle and which makes up most of the planets volume the changes in supercontinents has dramatically altered the worlds history

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About 300 million years ago, didn't have seven continents, but instead one massive supercontinent called Pangaea, which was surrounded by a single ocean called Panthalassa.

The explanation for Pangaea's formation ushered in the modern theory of plate tectonics, which posits that the Earth's outer shell is broken up into several plates that slide over Earth's rocky shell, the mantle.

"This is what's driven the entire of the planet through time. This is the major backbeat of the planet," said Brendan Murphy, a geology professor at the St. Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

Pangaea's history

More than a century ago, the scientist Alfred Wegener proposed the notion of an ancient supercontinent, which he named Pangaea (sometimes spelled Pangea), after putting together several lines of evidence.

The first and most obvious was that the "continents fit together like a tongue and groove," something that was quite noticeable on any accurate map, Murphy said. Another telltale hint that Earth's continents were all one land mass comes from the geologic record. Coal deposits found in Pennsylvania have a similar composition to those spanning across Poland, Great Britain and Germany from the same time period. That indicates that North America and Europe must have once been a single landmass. And the orientation of magnetic minerals in geologic sediments reveals how Earth's magnetic poles migrated over geologic time, Murphy said.

In the fossil record, identical plants, such as the extinct seed fern Glossopteris, are found on now widely disparate continents. And mountain chains that now lie on different continents, such as the Appalachians in the United States and the Atlas Mountains spanning Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia were all part of the Central Pangaea Mountains, formed through the collision of the supercontinents Gondwana and Laurussia.

(Image credit: Dimitrios Karamitros via Getty Images)

In the early Phanerozoic eon (541 million years ago to now), almost all of the continents were in the Southern Hemisphere, with Gondwana, the largest continent, spanning from the South Pole to the equator, according to a chapter in the scientific book "Ancient Supercontinents and the Paleogeography of Earth (opens in new tab)" (Elsevier, 2021). The Northern Hemisphere was largely covered by the Panthalassic Ocean. Another ocean - called Iapetus, after a mythical Greek titan - between the paleo-continents Laurentia, Baltica and Gondwana, began to close during the Ordovician period (485 million to 444 million years ago) and then disappeared during the Silurian period (444 million to 419 million years ago), when Baltica and Avalonia collided with Laurentia to form Laurussia, according to the chapter, "Phanerozoic paleogeography and Pangea (opens in new tab)."

Finally, about 320 million years ago, there was a major collision, geologically speaking, "when Gondwana, Laurussia, and intervening terranes collided to form the Pangea supercontinent," according to the chapter, written by Earth scientists Trond Torsvik, Mathew Domeier and Robin Cocks.

However, Pangaea wasn't the megalithe most people think it is. "Pangea never included all the continents at any one time," according to the chapter. For instance, "the Paleotethys Ocean to the east of Pangea remained wide throughout the Carboniferous [359 million to 299 million years ago] and presented something of a barrier between the supercontinent and a number of large, independent Asian terranes, including Tarim, North China, South China, and Annamia."

Later, during the Permian period (299 million to 251 million years ago), "many former peri-Gondwanan terranes drifted off the north-east Gondwana margin, commencing the opening of the Neotethys Ocean," according to the chapter.

When did Pangaea break apart?

(Image credit: Tinkivinki via Getty Images)

Pangaea broke up in several phases between 195 million and 170 million years ago. The breakup began about 195 million years ago in the early Jurassic period, when the Central Atlantic Ocean opened, according to the chapter. The supercontinent fractured largely along previous sutures.

(what is now Africa, South America, Antarctica, India and Australia) first split from Laurasia (Eurasia and North America). Then about 150 million years ago, Gondwana broke up. India peeled off from Antarctica, and Africa and South America rifted, according to a 1970 article in the Journal of Geophysical Research (opens in new tab). Around 60 million years ago, North America split off from Eurasia.

Pangaea's climate

Having one massive landmass made for very different climatic cycles. For instance, the interior of the continent may have been utterly dry, as it was locked behind massive mountain chains that blocked all moisture or rainfall, Murphy said.

But the coal deposits found in the United States and Europe reveal that parts of the ancient supercontinent near the equator must have been a lush, tropical rainforest, similar to the Amazonian jungle, Murphy said. (Coal forms when dead plants and animals sink into swampy water, where pressure and water transform the material into peat, then coal.)

"The coal deposits are essentially telling us that there was plentiful life on land," Murphy told Live Science.

Pangaea animals

(Image credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

(opens in new tab)

Pangaea existed for more than 100 million years, and during that time many animal groups thrived. During the Permian period, insects such as beetles and dragonflies flourished, as did the predecessors of mammals: the synapsids. But the existence of Pangaea overlapped with the worst mass extinction in history, the Permian-Triassic (P-TR) extinction event. Also called the Great Dying, it occurred around 252 million years ago and caused 96% of all marine species and around 70% of terrestrial species to go extinct, according to the Geological Society of America (opens in new tab).

The early Triassic period saw the rise of archosaurs, a group of animals that eventually gave rise to crocodiles, birds and a plethora of reptiles, including pterosaurs. And about 230 million years ago some of the earliest emerged on Pangaea, including theropods, largely carnivorous dinosaurs that mostly had air-filled bones and feathers similar to birds.

Cycle in history

The current configuration of continents is unlikely to be the last. Supercontinents have formed several times in Earth's history, only to be split off into new continents. Right now for instance, Australia is inching toward Asia, and the eastern portion of Africa is slowly peeling off from the rest of the continent.

Beyond that, the details get fuzzy. While the heat formed in the mantle likely comes from the radioactive decay of unstable elements, such as , scientists don't agree on whether there are mini-pockets of heat flow within the mantle, or if the entire shell is one big heat conveyor belt, Murphy said.

Current research on Pangaea

Scientists have created mathematical, 3D simulations to better understand the mechanisms behind continental movement. In a 2018 article in the journal Geoscience Frontiers (opens in new tab), Earth scientists Masaki Yoshida and M. Santosh explained how they produced simulations of large-scale continental movements since the breakup of Pangaea about 200 million years ago. The models show how tectonic plate motion and mantle convection forces worked together to break apart and move large land masses. For example, Pangaea's large mass insulated the mantle underneath, causing mantle flows that triggered the initial breakup of the supercontinent. Radioactive decay of the upper mantle also raised the temperature, causing upward mantle flows that broke off the Indian subcontinent and initiated its northern movement.

Yoshida and Santos created additional geological models to predict mantle convection and continental movement patterns 250 million years in the future. These models suggest that over millions of years, the Pacific Ocean will close as Australia, North America, Africa, and Eurasia come together in the Northern Hemisphere. Eventually, these continents will merge, forming a supercontinent called "Amasia." The two remaining continents, Antarctica and South America, are predicted to remain relatively immobile and separate from the new supercontinent.
Additional reporting by Carol Stoll, Live Science contributor
Additional resources

Enroll in the free online Cousera course "Our Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes (opens in new tab)" offered by the University of Manchester in the U.K.

U.S. Geological Survey: This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics (opens in new tab)

Check out this interactive map (opens in new tab) that shows where modern countries could have sat on the Pangaea supercontinent.

Bibliography

Live Science. "What is plate tectonics?" May 26, 2021.

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Facts About Pangaea, Ancient Supercontinent

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About 300 million years ago, didn't have seven continents, but instead one massive supercontinent called Pangaea, which was surrounded by a single ocean called Panthalassa. The explanation for Pangaea's formation ushered in the modern theory of plate tectonics , which posits that the Earth's outer shell is broken up into several plates that slide over Earth's rocky shell, the mantle.

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this is a video of alfred wegener

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Continental Drift: Wegener's Theory | Environmental Chemistry | Chemistry | FuseSchool

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Now i'm going to talk about his childhood. Alfred Wegener's dad ran a orphanage. Alfred always had always been interested in greenland. So he hiked walked and skated in training expectations and he started to study Germany and australia and then he got a Pdh in psychology astronomy.https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/leading-figures/alfred-wegener-theory-of-continental-drift/

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If there were a "geographical forecast", analogous to the predictions of meteorologists, it would show how over the next 100 million years the Atlantic Ocean will continue to expand, until it is much larger than the Pacific. And also how Africa will merge with Europe, with the Mediterranean disappearing and a mountain range emerging in its place to compete with the Himalayas-although Everest and its neighbouring mountains will still continue to rise. If this sounds shocking today, you should put yourself in the shoes of geologists back in 1912, who were much more troubled when a 32-year-old German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, launched his theory of continental drift. Thanks to his hypothesis, any child today knows that the continents are slowly moving and were joined together at the time when the dinosaurs appeared.

Credit: Tech Insider

Ever since the appearance of the first world maps, many people had noticed how well Brazil fits snugly under the belly of Africa. Alfred Wegener (1 November 1880 - November 1930) looked for other connections. He found research on identical fossils on the coasts of Africa and South America, something for which geologists, convinced that the world map was immutable, had offered a more implausible explanation: land bridges that had vanished after permitting animals and plants to travel from one continent to another.

Pangea, the supercontinent

But no matter how many bridges were dreamt up, the most renowned geologists were unable to explain why in Africa there are marking of glaciers or why near the North Pole there are remains of tropical vegetation in the form of coal. For Wegener this was only possible if the current continents were once concentrated around the equator forming a supercontinent, which broke apart some 200 million years ago and which he called Pangaea. Nobody had thought of relating all these facts, but Wegener saw in them the evidence of continental drift, thanks to his interest in different sciences.

With his multidisciplinary calling, Wegener had started out as an astronomer, being correct when he stated that craters on the Moon are the work of meteorites and not of volcanoes; later, he combined meteorological studies in Greenland with his geological theories, and did not have a steady job until after the age of 40, when an Austrian University created a post for him. He was a difficult scientist to pigeonhole. And for geologists he was an outsider who dared to question the foundations of their science, so most of them rejected his ideas with the backing of figures like Einstein, who wrote the prologue to a book that ridiculed Wegener.

A puzzle of tectonic plates

It is also true that he made some blunders, calculating that Greenland was approaching North America at a rate of 1.6 km each year, and saying that the continents were moving over the seabed but without explaining why. That was like saying that a plough can move on its own and leave no furrows. Tests were done, but with the most reliable instruments of the time no movement of the continents was detected. The 1964 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica still did not believe Wegener, but that year many geologists began siding with him, in view of new evidence. The idea took hold that the Earth's crust is a jigsaw puzzle of plates, which move as whole pieces and not just the highest parts, the continents. This new theory- plate tectonics -also explained that earthquakes and tsunamis occur when two plates rub against one another, and that when they collide head-on, large mountain ranges are formed.

In addition, thanks to geolocation satellites, we are now able to detect that Europe and North America are moving apart, although at the same speed that a fingernail grows: two metres in a lifetime. Today we have all learned at school-or even before, in cartoons-the theory of continental drift. But Wegener died in 1930, long before his success was recognised. During an expedition in Greenland, he left the camp for supplies and was found frozen months later. He was buried there and is still there, although he is now about two metres further away from his birthplace in Berlin.

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Ventana al Conocimiento (Knowledge Window)

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Alfred Wegener and His Theory of Continental Drift | OpenMind

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If there were a "geographical forecast", analogous to the predictions of meteorologists, it would show how over the next 100 million years the Atlantic Ocean will continue to expand, until it is much larger than the Pacific.

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Scientists have created 3D simulations to better understand continental drift. In the article Geoscience Frontiers it shows simulations on large-scale contient drifts from 200 million years ago. It shows how tectonic plate motion and mantle convection work together to move land masses. This is what happened to Pangaea when its mass insulated the mantle underneath causing mantle flows that caused the breakup of Pangaea.

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Now i'm talking some of his life outside of science. Alfred had three kids named Hanna Charlotte wegner. Another of his kids were Hilde wegner and his last one was named Sophie Kate wegener. These were his kids and his wife was named Else Koppen Wegener.

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Born on november 1st 1880. Alfred was a german scientist who lived in berlin. He came up with a theory that the continents were moving and that once they were together like a puzzle. No one believed  this theory at the time because he had no evidence. It was only till after his death they found out that he was right. Alfred live for 50 years and died in 1930 in november. He was trying to build a pyramid in ice and snow and they found his dead body in the snow and that is why no one knows on what day he died. Source from google and https://www.livescience.com/38218-facts-about- I got some evidence from google to know when he died and how and when he was born.

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The reason for this formation is the theory of Plate Tectonics, Which shows how the earths outer shell is broken up into different plates that slide over earths shell.

The result of churning and circulation in the earths mantle, which makes up the planets volume.

# data[].attributes.body
- About 300 million years ago, Earth didn't have seven continents, but instead one massive supercontinent called Pangaea, which was surrounded by a single ocean called Panthalassa.
- More than a century ago, the scientist Alfred Wegener proposed the notion of an ancient supercontinent, which he named Pangaea
- Coal deposits found in Pennsylvania have a similar composition to those spanning across Poland, Great Britain and Germany from the same time period
- In the fossil record, identical plants, such as the extinct seed fern Glossopteris, are found on now widely disparate continents.

(SOURCE: https://www.livescience.com/38218-facts-about-pangaea.html)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About 300 million years ago, didn't have seven continents, but instead one massive supercontinent called Pangaea, which was surrounded by a single ocean called Panthalassa.

The explanation for Pangaea's formation ushered in the modern theory of plate tectonics, which posits that the Earth's outer shell is broken up into several plates that slide over Earth's rocky shell, the mantle.

"This is what's driven the entire of the planet through time. This is the major backbeat of the planet," said Brendan Murphy, a geology professor at the St. Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

Pangaea's history

More than a century ago, the scientist Alfred Wegener proposed the notion of an ancient supercontinent, which he named Pangaea (sometimes spelled Pangea), after putting together several lines of evidence.

The first and most obvious was that the "continents fit together like a tongue and groove," something that was quite noticeable on any accurate map, Murphy said. Another telltale hint that Earth's continents were all one land mass comes from the geologic record. Coal deposits found in Pennsylvania have a similar composition to those spanning across Poland, Great Britain and Germany from the same time period. That indicates that North America and Europe must have once been a single landmass. And the orientation of magnetic minerals in geologic sediments reveals how Earth's magnetic poles migrated over geologic time, Murphy said.

In the fossil record, identical plants, such as the extinct seed fern Glossopteris, are found on now widely disparate continents. And mountain chains that now lie on different continents, such as the Appalachians in the United States and the Atlas Mountains spanning Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia were all part of the Central Pangaea Mountains, formed through the collision of the supercontinents Gondwana and Laurussia.

(Image credit: Dimitrios Karamitros via Getty Images)

In the early Phanerozoic eon (541 million years ago to now), almost all of the continents were in the Southern Hemisphere, with Gondwana, the largest continent, spanning from the South Pole to the equator, according to a chapter in the scientific book "Ancient Supercontinents and the Paleogeography of Earth (opens in new tab)" (Elsevier, 2021). The Northern Hemisphere was largely covered by the Panthalassic Ocean. Another ocean - called Iapetus, after a mythical Greek titan - between the paleo-continents Laurentia, Baltica and Gondwana, began to close during the Ordovician period (485 million to 444 million years ago) and then disappeared during the Silurian period (444 million to 419 million years ago), when Baltica and Avalonia collided with Laurentia to form Laurussia, according to the chapter, "Phanerozoic paleogeography and Pangea (opens in new tab)."

Finally, about 320 million years ago, there was a major collision, geologically speaking, "when Gondwana, Laurussia, and intervening terranes collided to form the Pangea supercontinent," according to the chapter, written by Earth scientists Trond Torsvik, Mathew Domeier and Robin Cocks.

However, Pangaea wasn't the megalithe most people think it is. "Pangea never included all the continents at any one time," according to the chapter. For instance, "the Paleotethys Ocean to the east of Pangea remained wide throughout the Carboniferous [359 million to 299 million years ago] and presented something of a barrier between the supercontinent and a number of large, independent Asian terranes, including Tarim, North China, South China, and Annamia."

Later, during the Permian period (299 million to 251 million years ago), "many former peri-Gondwanan terranes drifted off the north-east Gondwana margin, commencing the opening of the Neotethys Ocean," according to the chapter.

When did Pangaea break apart?

(Image credit: Tinkivinki via Getty Images)

Pangaea broke up in several phases between 195 million and 170 million years ago. The breakup began about 195 million years ago in the early Jurassic period, when the Central Atlantic Ocean opened, according to the chapter. The supercontinent fractured largely along previous sutures.

(what is now Africa, South America, Antarctica, India and Australia) first split from Laurasia (Eurasia and North America). Then about 150 million years ago, Gondwana broke up. India peeled off from Antarctica, and Africa and South America rifted, according to a 1970 article in the Journal of Geophysical Research (opens in new tab). Around 60 million years ago, North America split off from Eurasia.

Pangaea's climate

Having one massive landmass made for very different climatic cycles. For instance, the interior of the continent may have been utterly dry, as it was locked behind massive mountain chains that blocked all moisture or rainfall, Murphy said.

But the coal deposits found in the United States and Europe reveal that parts of the ancient supercontinent near the equator must have been a lush, tropical rainforest, similar to the Amazonian jungle, Murphy said. (Coal forms when dead plants and animals sink into swampy water, where pressure and water transform the material into peat, then coal.)

"The coal deposits are essentially telling us that there was plentiful life on land," Murphy told Live Science.

Pangaea animals

(Image credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

(opens in new tab)

Pangaea existed for more than 100 million years, and during that time many animal groups thrived. During the Permian period, insects such as beetles and dragonflies flourished, as did the predecessors of mammals: the synapsids. But the existence of Pangaea overlapped with the worst mass extinction in history, the Permian-Triassic (P-TR) extinction event. Also called the Great Dying, it occurred around 252 million years ago and caused 96% of all marine species and around 70% of terrestrial species to go extinct, according to the Geological Society of America (opens in new tab).

The early Triassic period saw the rise of archosaurs, a group of animals that eventually gave rise to crocodiles, birds and a plethora of reptiles, including pterosaurs. And about 230 million years ago some of the earliest emerged on Pangaea, including theropods, largely carnivorous dinosaurs that mostly had air-filled bones and feathers similar to birds.

Cycle in history

The current configuration of continents is unlikely to be the last. Supercontinents have formed several times in Earth's history, only to be split off into new continents. Right now for instance, Australia is inching toward Asia, and the eastern portion of Africa is slowly peeling off from the rest of the continent.

Beyond that, the details get fuzzy. While the heat formed in the mantle likely comes from the radioactive decay of unstable elements, such as , scientists don't agree on whether there are mini-pockets of heat flow within the mantle, or if the entire shell is one big heat conveyor belt, Murphy said.

Current research on Pangaea

Scientists have created mathematical, 3D simulations to better understand the mechanisms behind continental movement. In a 2018 article in the journal Geoscience Frontiers (opens in new tab), Earth scientists Masaki Yoshida and M. Santosh explained how they produced simulations of large-scale continental movements since the breakup of Pangaea about 200 million years ago. The models show how tectonic plate motion and mantle convection forces worked together to break apart and move large land masses. For example, Pangaea's large mass insulated the mantle underneath, causing mantle flows that triggered the initial breakup of the supercontinent. Radioactive decay of the upper mantle also raised the temperature, causing upward mantle flows that broke off the Indian subcontinent and initiated its northern movement.

Yoshida and Santos created additional geological models to predict mantle convection and continental movement patterns 250 million years in the future. These models suggest that over millions of years, the Pacific Ocean will close as Australia, North America, Africa, and Eurasia come together in the Northern Hemisphere. Eventually, these continents will merge, forming a supercontinent called "Amasia." The two remaining continents, Antarctica and South America, are predicted to remain relatively immobile and separate from the new supercontinent.
Additional reporting by Carol Stoll, Live Science contributor
Additional resources

Enroll in the free online Cousera course "Our Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes (opens in new tab)" offered by the University of Manchester in the U.K.

U.S. Geological Survey: This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics (opens in new tab)

Check out this interactive map (opens in new tab) that shows where modern countries could have sat on the Pangaea supercontinent.

Bibliography

Live Science. "What is plate tectonics?" May 26, 2021.

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Facts About Pangaea, Ancient Supercontinent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
About 300 million years ago, didn't have seven continents, but instead one massive supercontinent called Pangaea, which was surrounded by a single ocean called Panthalassa. The explanation for Pangaea's formation ushered in the modern theory of plate tectonics , which posits that the Earth's outer shell is broken up into several plates that slide over Earth's rocky shell, the mantle.

# data[].attributes.body
Around 300 million years Ago there was only one continent, Pangaea.  At that time there was only one oceans it was called Panthalassa.  Pangaea split apart because of the modern theory of plate tectonics. Pangaea is not the only supercontinent ever several supercontinents have broken up over the past 3.5 billion years.

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