Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Pangaea - The SuperContinent
Pangaea, Pangæa, or Pangea (pron.: /pænˈdʒiːə/ pan-jee-ə;[1]) was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras, forming about 300 million years ago[2] and beginning to rift around 200 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configurations.[3] The single global ocean which surrounded Pangaea is accordingly named Panthalassa.
The name Pangaea is derived from Ancient Greek pan (πᾶν) meaning "entire," and Gaia (Γαῖα) meaning "Earth." The name was coined during a 1927 symposium discussing Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift. In his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane), first published in 1915, he postulated that all the continents had at one time formed a single supercontinent which he called the "Urkontinent", before later breaking up and drifting to their present locations.[4]
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