Continental Drift

With improved technology, geologists have taken the Continental Drift theory back in time to 1,100 million years ago (Precambrian geologic time) when another supercontinent had existed long before Pangaea. This supercontinent named Rodinia split into the two half-continents that moved far apart to the north and south extremes of the planet. About 514 million years ago (in the late Cambrian), Laurasia (what is now Eurasia, Greenland, and North America) drifted from the north until 425 million years ago when it crashed into Gondwana (also called Gonwanaland and composed of South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, India, and New Zealand). By 356 million years ago (the Carboniferous period), Pangaea had formed. The C-shaped Pangaea, united along Mexico to Spain/Algeria, was separated in the middle by the Tethys Sea, an ancient sea to the east, whose remnants include the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas. Panthalassa, a superocean ("All Ocean"), covered the side of the globe opposite the one protocontinent.