48 Fun Facts About Pangaea

The name Pangaea comes from ancient words meaning what?

All earth is the literal sense: pan, 'all, entire', joined to Gaia, the Earth, so the name describes a single landmass holding nearly all the planet's land.

Wegener's 1915 book expanding the theory was titled, in English, what?

The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane) first appeared in 1915 and went through three revised editions; in it he called the single landmass the Urkontinent.

Pangaea finished assembling from Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during which geological period?

Carboniferous time, about 335 million years ago, saw the last of the three blocks weld together; the supercontinent then held together until rifting began about 200 million years ago.

What letter shape did Pangaea resemble?

C is the letter the supercontinent resembled: the Tethys Ocean filled the bight on its eastern side, while a single superocean wrapped around the rest.

What was the name of the vast superocean that surrounded Pangaea?

Panthalassa, whose name means 'all sea', wrapped around the supercontinent and covered roughly 70% of Earth's surface about 250 million years ago.

The northern of Pangaea's two great landmasses was called what?

Laurasia, a portmanteau of Laurentia and Eurasia, comprised North America, Europe and most of Asia; it parted from Gondwana to the south as the supercontinent broke up in the Jurassic.

Which geologist named Gondwana after a region of India?

Eduard Suess coined the name in the 1880s from the Gondwana region of central India, 'forest of the Gonds', whose Permian rocks and Glossopteris fossils matched those of other southern continents.

Roughly what fraction of today's continental area consists of former pieces of Gondwana?

About two-thirds of today's continental area was once part of Gondwana: South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Zealandia, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent all broke away from it.

The Tethys Ocean, inside the supercontinent's curve, preceded which modern sea?

The Mediterranean is the main surviving remnant of the Tethys, which closed as Africa and India pushed north into Eurasia; the Black and Caspian Seas descend from the later Paratethys.

The Tethys Ocean is named after a figure from which mythology?

Greek myth supplied the name: Tethys was a Titaness of the sea, sister and wife of Oceanus and mother of the Oceanids; the vanished ocean was named after her in 1893.

Who may have first suggested, in 1596, that the continents were once joined and torn apart?

Abraham Ortelius, the Flemish cartographer, wrote in the 1596 Thesaurus Geographicus that the Americas were 'torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and floods', noting how the coastlines matched.

Antonio Snider-Pellegrini's 1858 maps of the continents fitted together attributed their separation to what?

The Biblical Flood, he argued in La Création et ses mystères dévoilés (1858), split a single landmass into the continents; his two maps showed the Americas fitted against Africa and Europe.

Wegener originally proposed what as the mechanism driving continents apart?

Centrifugal force from Earth's rotation, which he called Polflucht or 'flight from the poles', was his main proposal, with tidal drag as a second; physicists showed both were far too weak.

Which English geologist proposed in 1931 that convection cells in the mantle move the crust?

Arthur Holmes argued in 1931 that heat from radioactive decay drives convection currents in the mantle that could carry continents; his 1944 textbook Principles of Physical Geology gave drift a full chapter.

The Appalachians and which European range are thought to have formed one chain across Pangaea?

The Scandinavian Caledonides and the Appalachians were raised in the same early Paleozoic collisions as an ocean closed between them, and later stood as one belt inside the assembled supercontinent until the Atlantic split them.

At their peak 295 million years ago, the Central Pangaean Mountains rivalled which range?

The Himalayas are the modern comparison: the Central Pangaean Mountains, thrown up where Gondwana's northwest edge collided with Euramerica, stood at Himalayan scale around 295 million years ago before eroding away by the Triassic.

Fossils of the small freshwater reptile Mesosaurus occur in Brazil and which other region?

Southern Africa's Karoo Basin and the Paraná Basin of Brazil and Uruguay hold the Mesosaurus fossils; a metre-long freshwater reptile could not have crossed an ocean, so the match argues the continents were joined.

Glossopteris, whose fossils helped tie Gondwana together, was what kind of plant?

A seed fern, or pteridosperm, Glossopteris bore the tongue-shaped leaves that give it its name; its forests spread across the southern continents in the Permian and died out in the end-Permian extinction.

Lystrosaurus, found from South Africa to Antarctica, is notable for what?

Surviving and thriving after the Great Dying made this pig-sized dicynodont famous: it makes up most vertebrate fossils in some Early Triassic beds, and its spread from South Africa to India and Antarctica supported drift.

Which South African geologist's 1937 book Our Wandering Continents proposed two original supercontinents?

Alexander du Toit argued in Our Wandering Continents (1937) for two original supercontinents, Gondwana in the south and a northern counterpart; in 1923 he travelled to South America to confirm its rocks matched southern Africa's.

Matching glacial deposits on separate continents point to a late Paleozoic ice cap over which part of Pangaea?

Its southern end, the Gondwana half, lay over the South Pole during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age, leaving glacial deposits and striations across Antarctica, India, Australia, southern Africa and South America.

What was the climate like in Pangaea's vast interior?

Dry with extreme heat and cold describes the interior: far from any coast, it swung between scorching summers and bitter winters and held some of the most extensive deserts in Earth's history.

The Permian–Triassic 'Great Dying' wiped out roughly what share of marine species?

81% of marine species and about 70% of land vertebrate species disappeared about 252 million years ago; eruptions of the Siberian Traps are the accepted main cause.

Which mass extinction is linked to eruptions of the Central Atlantic magmatic province?

Triassic–Jurassic extinction, about 201 million years ago, coincided with the Central Atlantic magmatic province, whose basalts spread over roughly 11 million square kilometres as the supercontinent began to rift.

Where did the first rifting of Pangaea begin?

The north-central Atlantic, between eastern North America and northwest Africa, was where rifting began in the Jurassic, with new seafloor forming by about 175 million years ago; the South Atlantic did not open until the Cretaceous.

After separating from Madagascar, India moved north toward Eurasia at what plate-tectonic record speed?

About 15 cm per year was India's pace after it parted from Madagascar around 90 million years ago, the fastest plate motion known; its collision with Eurasia closed the eastern Tethys.

Where does the break-up of Pangaea continue today?

The Red Sea and East African Rifts are the last stage of the break-up: Arabia has split from Africa along the Red Sea, and the East African Rift is slowly splitting the Somali plate from the rest of the continent.

Which supercontinent existed from about 1.3 billion to 750 million years ago, before Pannotia?

Rodinia, from the Russian for 'motherland', held most of the world's continents from more than a billion years ago until it broke apart around 750 million years ago, a break-up tied to the Snowball Earth glaciations.

The supercontinent Columbia, assembled around 2.0 to 1.8 billion years ago, is also known by what name?

Nuna, from an Inuit word for the lands bordering the northern oceans, is the same supercontinent that John Rogers and M. Santosh named Columbia in 2002; Hudsonland is a third name for it.

What did Valentine and Moores originally call the Precambrian supercontinent they recognised in 1970, renamed in 1990?

Pangaea I was the name James Valentine and Eldridge Moores gave it in 1970; the 1990 renaming by Mark and Dianna McMenamin came with the first plate reconstruction of the supercontinent.

How long is one complete supercontinent cycle thought to take?

Three to five hundred million years separate one supercontinent from the next in the cycle model; the related Wilson cycle, named for John Tuzo Wilson, tracks the opening and closing of a single ocean.

By one proposed definition, a supercontinent must hold at least what share of existing continental crust?

About 75% of existing continental crust is the threshold in one widely cited 2012 definition; by that measure no supercontinent exists today, since Afro-Eurasia holds only about 57% of Earth's land.

What is Christopher Scotese's projected supercontinent, expected in about 250 million years, called?

Pangaea Proxima replaced his earlier name Pangaea Ultima, which wrongly implied a final supercontinent; in his model the Atlantic closes and the Americas rejoin Africa and Eurasia in about 250 million years.

Roy Livermore's proposed future supercontinent Novopangaea assumes the closure of which ocean?

The Pacific closes in Novopangaea, which Roy Livermore proposed in the 1990s: the Americas and Asia meet where the ocean once was, Australia docks against East Asia and Antarctica drifts north.

Wegener died in 1930 during his fourth expedition to which place?

Greenland claimed him in November 1930: returning from the ice-cap station Eismitte with his companion Rasmus Villumsen, he died on the ice; his body was found in May 1931, marked by his upright skis.

Wegener and his brother Kurt set a record in 1906 in what activity?

A continuous balloon flight of 52.5 hours in April 1906 set a world endurance record; the brothers used the flight to test meteorological instruments and a method of celestial navigation.

Which meteorologist was Wegener's father-in-law and co-author of a book on ancient climates?

Köppen is best known for his climate classification system; the 1924 book was The Climates of the Geological Past.

Which Princeton geologist and wartime naval captain used his ship's echo sounder to map the ocean floor and later proposed seafloor spreading?

Harry Hess commanded the transport USS Cape Johnson during the Second World War, running its echo sounder to discover the flat-topped seamounts he named guyots; his 1962 paper History of Ocean Basins set out seafloor spreading.

What pattern on the ocean floor, mirrored either side of mid-ocean ridges, clinched the case for seafloor spreading?

Magnetic stripes of alternately normal and reversed polarity, symmetrical about the ridge, record field reversals frozen into new crust; Fred Vine, Drummond Matthews and Lawrence Morley explained them in 1963.

Why did Marie Tharp draw the first scientific map of the Atlantic floor from shore?

Women were barred from research ships at Lamont until the late 1960s, so Bruce Heezen gathered soundings aboard the Vema for 18 years while Tharp plotted them ashore, revealing the rift valley along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge spreads at an average rate of about how much per year?

2.5 cm a year, about the speed fingernails grow, is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge's average; the fastest-spreading ridges run closer to the pace of hair growth.

Which island country sits directly on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?

The Azores, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha also lie on or near the ridge; in Iceland it is called the Neovolcanic Zone.

How many major tectonic plates does Earth's lithosphere have, depending on how they are defined?

Seven or eight major plates make up the lithosphere, depending on whether the Indian and Australian plates are counted together; dozens of minor plates fill the gaps between them.

What name is given to the lithified glacial deposits that link the Gondwana continents?

Tillite is glacial till hardened into rock; matching late Paleozoic tillites in South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica were among the key proofs that the southern lands were once joined.

Which ocean closed when Baltica and Laurentia collided to form Euramerica?

Iapetus, named for the Titan father of Atlas, closed about 420 million years ago in the Caledonian orogeny, the collision that welded Baltica to Laurentia and built mountains from Norway and Scotland to Newfoundland.

Which mountain range formed when western Kazakhstania hit Baltica in the late Carboniferous?

The Urals rose in the Uralian orogeny, as the Ural Ocean closed and Kazakhstania, followed by Siberia, collided with Baltica along the supercontinent's northeastern flank.

Which orogeny built the Central Pangaean Mountains when northwest Africa met Euramerica?

Variscan (also Hercynian) orogeny is the European name for the collision; its North American counterpart, the Alleghanian orogeny, raised the southern Appalachians, and the same squeeze built Morocco's Meseta and the Mauritanides.

Which Ordovician microcontinent carried pieces of Newfoundland, Britain and New England north?

Avalonia rifted from Gondwana's northern margin around 480 million years ago and drifted north across the closing ocean, colliding first with Baltica and then with Laurentia; its fragments lie from Newfoundland to Belgium.