mercredi 17 mai 2017

May 17th, 2017

Pangaea is often referred to as the original supercontinent, from which all present-day continents derived. However, in the geologic history of earth, Pangaea showed up relatively late (around 335 million years ago). Before Pangaea were three billion years of continents and supercontinents, drifting around and sometimes bumping into each other, and other times splitting apart. The very first continent is said to be the somewhat mythical Vaalbara, which (if it existed at all) formed around 3.6 billion years ago. It's somewhat hard to piece together the rest, but similar geologic formations found on two or more continents can help, as can shared fossils records and animal life.

Bonus:
A supercontinent doesn't need to be exceptionally large. It is usually defined as an ancient continent that contained parts of all (or most) of today's continents.

-E

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