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Pangaea
A puzzle of epic proportions
• The super continent of Pangaea was once made up of all the land
masses we recognize on our earth today.
• Everyone should have an envelope with some cut outs of the
continents.
• Take the next few minutes to try and put the continents together
into a puzzle, this puzzle will give you a good idea of how
Pangaea looked over 200 million years ago.
.....
• Do they all fit together?
• What do you notice about the ways they do or do not match up?
¿Pangaea Questions?
• What does “Pangaea” mean anyways?
• What exactly is Pangaea… ?
• How do we know what it was like 200 mya if no
one is alive to tell us about it?
• If there was only one continent, was there only one
ocean? What was it called?
• What happened to Pangaea, how did it separate?
• If the continents moved around millions of years
ago how do we know they won’t do it again?
These are ALL good questions… Lets see if we can find out
for ourselves!
Define Pangaea…
• The word Pangaea comes from Greek
words “pan” and “gaia”
“pan” meaning “entire”
“gaia” meaning “earth”
• Therefore Pangaea literally means “Entire
Earth.” Which seems fitting because it
was composed of every land mass on the
entire Earth!
What is Pangaea?
• Pangaea is a
super continent
that is said to
have existed
from the Permian
through the
Jurassic period
in our earth’s
history.
• Alfred Wegner first
suggested the
existence of Pangaea
while exploring his
theory of continental
drift.
• He theorized that
millions of years ago
the continents were all
formed together in one
land mass that he
called Pangaea.
• Alfred couldn’t explain
what force had the
power to move the
continents, but his
evidence had him
convinced of his
theory.
What is Pangaea?
Alfred Wegner
(http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/glossary/
Contdrift.shtml)
What evidence?
• There are a few sources of evidence
supporting the existence of Pangaea…
– Fossils
– Magnetic orientation of rocks and minerals
– Matching coastlines (like puzzle pieces!)
• When we learned about the rock cycle we
learned that rocks can be made by the heat from
the earth melting them down to make new rocks.
• Minerals in the rocks that respond to magnets
cool down and position themselves to point to
magnetic North
• Since we see that minerals in the earth are not
oriented to magnetic North, we can conclude
that the change in magnetic orientation is a
result of continental drift.
Sedimentary
Rock
Igneous
Rock
Metamorphic
Rock
Did anyone notice any
more puzzle like
coastlines when we
assembled our map of
Pangaea?
Since all the continents were joined in one land mass
(Pangaea), the remaining area of our earth was covered in
ocean!
This ocean is referred to as, Panthalassa.
Do you guys remember learning
about plate tectonics?
• Alfred’s theory of
continental drift inspired
other scientists to develop
the theory we know today
as plate tectonics.
• This answered his
troublesome question
regarding what force was
strong enough to move
continents.
• Now that we know about
continental and oceanic
plates, Alfred’s theory on
the existence of Pangaea
and continental drift doesn’t
seem so far fetched…
• Lystrosaurus (meaning "shovel lizard",
pronounced) was a genus of Late Permian
and Early Triassic Period which lived
around 250 million years ago in what is
now Antarctica, India, and South Africa.
• Glossopteris (Greek glossa (γλώσσα),
meaning "tongue", because the leaves
were tongue-shaped) is the largest and
best-known genus of the extinct order of
seed ferns known as Glossopteridales
• Mesosaurus is an extinct genus of
anapsid reptile from the early Permian
period of southern Africa and South
America.