In the late Paleozoic (say on the order of 300 million years ago), the wanderings of Earth’s tectonic plates resulted in a global gridlock in which all the continents were contained in a single landmass given the name “Pangaea.” Boring you with the Greek roots, this means “Entire Earth” essentially. (Gaia, by the way, was the Mother Earth and mother of nearly everything in ancient Greece, so it is fitting to call Pangaea the Mother of All Modern Continents.) Around 200 million years ago, plate tectonics being never satisfied, the super-continent began rifting apart along its seams, separating into Gondwana and Laurasia, which in their turn broke apart into South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia (Gondwana) as well as Europe, North America, Asia and Greenland (mostly Laurasia) and any other stray fragments I’ve forgotten to mention. Anyway, as a result there are remnants of Pangaea scattered about the globe. Yes, you can visit Pangaea while on a trip to Greece, or China, or Scandinavia, or Canada – there are exposures of Pangaea on nearly every continent today, though some may be difficult to sample when covered by thick ice as in the Antarctic. This clever map shows the reconstructed Pangaea as a collection of today’s political boundaries. It makes for several strange neighbors: how the residents of Mauritania and North Carolina would get along one can only guess. However, the political climate is the worst of our concerns for a reunited Pangaea. The climate of Pangaea is generally agreed to have been hell on Earth. Supercontinents, according to Paul Valdes at the University of Bristol UK, create climatic extremes. This is, after all, one huge landmass, and rain clouds would not have been able to reach far inland, meaning vast expanses of extreme desert conditions. The temperature differences between the hot interiors and the oceans could create monster monsoons. Not a nice world to live in.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 00:18:35 +0000
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