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48 free Pangaea trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Pangaea trivia quiz covers the last supercontinent, the C-shaped landmass that held nearly all of Earth's dry land together from about 335 to 175 million years ago. The easier questions handle what most people remember from school: what the name means, the German scientist who proposed continental drift, the two halves called Gondwana and Laurasia, the superocean around it and the way South America and Africa fit together like puzzle pieces. The harder end is for geology fans: the 16th-century mapmaker who first noticed the fit, the reptile whose fossils turn up only in Brazil and West Africa, the seed fern that stitched Gondwana together, the Central Pangean Mountains that once rivalled the Himalayas, the mantle-convection idea of Arthur Holmes, the magnetic stripes and ocean-floor maps that finally convinced geologists in the 1960s, the Great Dying and the flood basalts that accompanied the breakup, and the earlier supercontinents Rodinia and Columbia. There are also questions on Wegener's death in Greenland and the future supercontinents geologists have sketched. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Pangaea, plate tectonics, the scientists involved and the fossils and oceans concerned before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our geology, volcanoes, dinosaurs and Earth science quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Pangaea comes from ancient words meaning what?
All earth
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.
Q 02Wegener's 1915 book expanding the theory was titled, in English, what?
The Origin of Continents and Oceans
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.
Q 03Pangaea finished assembling from Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during which geological period?
Carboniferous
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.
Q 04What letter shape did Pangaea resemble?
C
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.
Q 05What was the name of the vast superocean that surrounded Pangaea?
Panthalassa
Panthalassa, whose name means 'all sea', wrapped around the supercontinent and covered roughly 70% of Earth's surface about 250 million years ago.
Q 06The northern of Pangaea's two great landmasses was called what?
Laurasia
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.
Q 07Which geologist named Gondwana after a region of India?
Eduard Suess
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.
Q 08Roughly what fraction of today's continental area consists of former pieces of Gondwana?
About two-thirds
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.
Q 09The Tethys Ocean, inside the supercontinent's curve, preceded which modern sea?
The Mediterranean
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.
Q 10The Tethys Ocean is named after a figure from which mythology?
Greek
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.
Q 11Who may have first suggested, in 1596, that the continents were once joined and torn apart?
Abraham Ortelius
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.
Q 12Antonio Snider-Pellegrini's 1858 maps of the continents fitted together attributed their separation to what?
The Biblical Flood
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.
Q 13Wegener originally proposed what as the mechanism driving continents apart?
Q 21Matching glacial deposits on separate continents point to a late Paleozoic ice cap over which part of Pangaea?
Its southern end
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.
Q 22What was the climate like in Pangaea's vast interior?
Dry with extreme heat and cold
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.
Q 23The Permian–Triassic 'Great Dying' wiped out roughly what share of marine species?
Centrifugal force from Earth's rotation
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.
Q 14Which English geologist proposed in 1931 that convection cells in the mantle move the crust?
Arthur Holmes
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.
Q 15The Appalachians and which European range are thought to have formed one chain across Pangaea?
The Scandinavian Caledonides
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.
Q 16At their peak 295 million years ago, the Central Pangaean Mountains rivalled which range?
The Himalayas
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.
Q 17Fossils of the small freshwater reptile Mesosaurus occur in Brazil and which other region?
Southern Africa
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.
Q 18Glossopteris, whose fossils helped tie Gondwana together, was what kind of plant?
A seed fern
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.
Q 19Lystrosaurus, found from South Africa to Antarctica, is notable for what?
Surviving and thriving after the Great Dying
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.
Q 20Which South African geologist's 1937 book Our Wandering Continents proposed two original supercontinents?
Alexander du Toit
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.
81%
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.
Q 24Which mass extinction is linked to eruptions of the Central Atlantic magmatic province?
Triassic–Jurassic
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.
Q 25Where did the first rifting of Pangaea begin?
The north-central Atlantic
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.
Q 26After separating from Madagascar, India moved north toward Eurasia at what plate-tectonic record speed?
About 15 cm per year
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.
Q 27Where does the break-up of Pangaea continue today?
The Red Sea and East African Rifts
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.
Q 28Which supercontinent existed from about 1.3 billion to 750 million years ago, before Pannotia?
Rodinia
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.
Q 29The supercontinent Columbia, assembled around 2.0 to 1.8 billion years ago, is also known by what name?
Nuna
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.
Q 30What did Valentine and Moores originally call the Precambrian supercontinent they recognised in 1970, renamed in 1990?
Pangaea I
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.