Continents on the Move Pangaea begins to break up and splits into two major landmasses — Laurasia in the north, made up of North America and Eurasia, and Gondwana in the south, made up of the other continents.
A Single Supercontinent During the Triassic period 200 million years ago, the land mass that had been Pangaea was divided into two major land masses, Laurasia and Gondwanaland. The name Pangaea, or Pangea, borrows from Greek, meaning "all earth".
PangaeaPangea, also spelled Pangaea, in early geologic time, a supercontinent that incorporated almost all the landmasses on Earth. Pangea was surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa, and it was fully assembled by the Early Permian Epoch (some 299 million to about 273 million years ago).
When Pangaea broke up, the northern continents of North America and Eurasia became separated from the southern continents of Antarctica, India, South America, Australia and Africa. The large northern continent is called Laurasia and the southern continent is called Gondwanaland.
Laurasia (/lɔːˈreɪʒə, -ʃiə/) was the more northern of two large landmasses that formed part of the Pangaea supercontinent from around 335 to 175 million years ago (Mya), the other being Gondwana.
The Greek word Pangea mean which meant all earth and PANTHALASSA means all water. According to Wegener, all the continents formed a single continental mass and mega ocean surrounded the same. The supercontinent was named PANGAEA and the mega water is called PANTHALASSA.
Geological “fit” evidence is the matching of large-scale geological features on different continents. The coastlines of South America and West Africa seem to match up.
Pangaea existed as a supercontinent for 160 million years, from its assembly around 335 million years ago (Early Carboniferous) to its breakup 175 million years ago (Middle Jurassic).