Pangaea - When the whole world was One Continent!

 

Hey kids! Welcome to KidsCast! Have you ever wondered, what our own world, our own earth looked like, so many years ago? In fact, at the time when Jurassic Dinosaurs were there? Yes, so old. So today we're going to learn about the Earth, when it was just one continent, and when all the continents we have today were joined together. So let us begin!

What was Pangaea? 

Pangaea (also known as Pangea), was a supercontinent, or you can say when all the continents of the world were combined, the Pangaea was that whole supercontinent. Just like you can cut a cake into a lot of pieces, in the same way, Pangaea got divided into seven continents or so. In this way, one side of Earth was completely ocean, and almost whole one side was land, as all the continents were combined. Pangaea was surrounded by a global ocean named Panthalassa. It was completely combined from the time period of 299 million to about 273 million years ago. This time period is called Permian Epoch. The supercontinent started to break apart about 200 million years ago, during the time of the Jurassic dinosaurs. 

The Shape of Pangaea: 

Pangaea was actually C-shaped. Or you can say shaped like a huge bean. You see on the map? All the continents are joined together, forming a C-like structure. All the continents were packed up together. Europe and Asia were joined together as one continent we today too call: Eurasia, North and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and Antarctica joined to Africa. Australia was joined by India and Antarctica. 

The Tethys Ocean: 

The Tethys Ocean or Tethys Sea was a saltwater body, surrounded from three sides by the huge Pangaea landmass. It was separated from the Panthalassa Ocean and was a smaller water body. It is considered to be the water body that existed millions of years ago, whose remains are water bodies like the Aral Sea, Lake Urmia, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and the Capsian Sea. Gradually as the landmasses separated, this sea kept on decreasing and decreasing, eventually forming remains, i.e.- smaller seas. 

The Separation of Continents:

The supercontinent of Pangaea finally broke apart due to a process called Continental Drift. In this continental drift, due to the Earth's mantle's convection, the landmasses, or what we call continents started to break apart, and move away from each other. However, this was not the same for all landmasses. Some landmasses moved away from each other, and others joined together to form a full continent. 

In fact, that is not all. The continental drift still occurs, and scientists predict that in the future our Earth will again form a supercontinent! So there is a lot more about Pangaea, but this was all about it in this article! So till the next article, Stay Smart, and Happy Learning!