Pangaea

Earth history · continents · ancient geography

All land together. Pangaea was a supercontinent formed when three earlier landmasses, Gondwana, Euramerica, and Siberia, crashed together during the Carboniferous period approximately 335 million years ago. It brought almost all of Earth's continents into one giant connected piece.

C-shaped giant. Pangaea had a curved C-shape, with most of its mass stretching between Earth's north and south poles. Imagine if you took all the continents and smooshed them together into one enormous landmass.

Surrounded by oceans. The supercontinent was surrounded by a vast superocean called Panthalassa on one side and the Paleo-Tethys and Tethys Oceans on the other. These were much bigger and deeper than any ocean you'd see on a map today.

Started breaking apart. Pangaea didn't stay together forever. It began to break apart about 200 million years ago at the end of the Triassic period, slowly separating into the continents we know today.

First supercontinent mapped. Pangaea was the most recent supercontinent to exist and the first one that geologists were able to reconstruct and map. By studying rocks and fossils, scientists figured out how all the continents once fit together like a puzzle.