What is Pangea (or Pangaea) - More Grades 3-6 Science on Harmony Square

Pangea or Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from earlier continental units approximately 335 million years ago, and it began to break apart about 175 million years ago. In contrast to the present Earth and its distribution of continental mass, much of Pangaea was in the Southern Hemisphere and surrounded by a super-ocean, Panthalassa. Pangaea was the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists. Pangea’s formation is now commonly explained in terms of plate tectonics. The involvement of plate tectonics in Pangea’s separation helps to show how it did not separate all at once, but at different times, in sequences. Additionally, after these separations, it has also been discovered that the separated land masses may have also continued to break apart multiple times. The formation of each environment and climate on Pangaea is due to plate tectonics, and thus, it is as a result of these shifts and