In the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods there would have been a supercontinent known as Pangea.
History and Geography books allow us to know that Pangea is the name by which a supercontinent is identified that would have existed in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods due to the agglutination of all the continents that we recognize today. It is believed that the term, which emerged from the union of the Greek prefix pan ( "everything" ) and the word gea (which, in Spanish, means "soil" or "earth" ), was used for the first time by the German-born scientist Alfred Wegener .
Hypotheses indicate that Pangea would have been a giant block of land with the appearance of the letter C that was distributed around the equator and was surrounded by an ocean known as Pantalasa . Being a single supercontinent, terrestrial organisms could migrate from the South Pole to the North Pole .
The rise of Pangea
The origin of Pangea would have taken place approximately 300 million years ago. Towards the end of the Triassic and the beginning of the Jurassic , the shifts of the tectonic plates caused Pangea to experience fragmentation and two new continents were consolidated: Gondwana , in the southern sector, and Laurasia , to the north.
These two continents were divided by the Tethys Sea . Over time, the movement of continental masses (a phenomenon known as continental drift , a process that still continues) ended up generating the continents as we identify them today.
The phenomenon of continental drift
According to this theory , there is a mechanism that is repeated over millions of years, by which the plates on which the various continents of the Earth are fixed move; This phenomenon is called continental drift.
This movement occurs because a force is created beneath the oceanic crust that drives the continental masses upward and as a consequence, they change their position.
The configuration of the continents changed over the course of history.
The development of Wegener's theory of Pangea
Although Alfred Wegener is considered the author of the theory, it is necessary to clarify that long before he published his work " The Origin of the Continents and Oceans ", there were two men who had mentioned it. The first of them was Francis Bacon in 1620, an English scientist who focused his attention on the similarity that existed between the shapes of the continents.
This allowed him to intuit that it was due to the fact that in the past there had been only one continent; However, he was unable to develop a consistent theory. The second was Antonio Snider, an American who lived in Paris in 1858, who based on what Bacon had studied, proposed that the continents moved over the years. Finally, in 1915, Alfred Wegener, the German meteorologist who developed the theory and became the author of this concept, appeared.
From one supercontinent to multiple continents
In his theory, Wegener explained that millions of years ago the continents were united in a supercontinent that he called Pangea; Later it was divided into two important fragments that in turn were subdivided, until reaching the distribution and shape that they have today.
In any case, his theory was not accepted until much later, when paleomagnetism was known (a phenomenon that expresses that at the moment rocks are formed, a very strong magnetic charge is produced). Through an analysis of the rocky areas that border the continents, scientists were able to know how the continental rocks had been formed and where exactly they were located at that time, being able to reach the conclusion that, given the positions, all continents were united.
Reasons that would explain the existence of Pangea
Some questions that helped to accept the theory even more were:
* Coincidences in botanical and animal species between such separated regions (since they could not have crossed the ocean, but could have dispersed when the terrain was still one);
* Similar climates between several continents. (If you put the puzzle together, you can discover that those who share a climate were previously united);
* Rock formations that are the same age and are of the same type (for example between South America and Africa).
It should be noted that scientists consider that Pangea was not the first supercontinent. Pannotia would have been another megacontinent, formed 600 million years ago and segmented around fifty million years later. Other possible supercontinents, according to scientific evidence, were Rodinia (formed 1.1 billion years ago and separated 750 million years ago) and Columbia (which was born 1.8 billion years ago and fragmented about three hundred million years later).