Six continents separated by vast expanses of water this is the familiar image of our planet that we have all shared since childhood. But the Earth hasn't always looked like this. Over the past 4.6 billion years, our planet has gone through many geological eras. During some of these eras, almost the entire surface was covered with ice, while in other periods, on the contrary, the polar caps melted completely.
In the distant past, the continents were not arranged as they are today. Land blocks moved relative to each other, which led to movement, collision of continents and the emergence of supercontinents that united almost all the landmasses.


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Pangea:
The word "Pangea" comes from the Greek words Pan (meaning "all") and Gaia (meaning "earth"), which means "all the lands". This name perfectly refers to the supercontinent, as Pangea was once one land, since all the lands were then gathered in one place.
A supercontinent is a continent composed of most or all of the Earth's land mass. The most recent supercontinent to include all of Earth's major landmasses and arguably the most famous was Pangea. Supercontinents have sporadically joined and broken up over the course of Earth's geologic history.
Recall that the geologic history of the Earth is a sequence of events in the development of the Earth as a planet. Among these events are the formation of rocks, the emergence and destruction of landforms, the advance and retreat of the seas, ice ages, and the appearance and disappearance of species of living beings.
The most modern definition emphasizes that the supercontinent is a geological formation that, with its structure, affects the distribution of heat flows, air masses of the Earth, etc. It is a large structure, but it does not necessarily unite all the continental blocks.
In the distant past, all the continents formed a single whole, the supercontinent Pangea. This huge continent began to form about 335 million years ago, during the Paleozoic period.


During the process of formation of Pangea from older continents, mountain systems appeared on the places of their collision, some of them still exist today, for example the Urals or the Appalachians.
These early mountains are much older than the relatively young mountain systems such as the Alps in Europe, the Cordillera in North America, the Andes in South America or the Himalayas in Asia. Due to erosion over millions of years, the Urals and the Appalachians are now low mountains.
Most of this supercontinent was concentrated in the southern hemisphere. The only ocean that surrounded it was called "Panthalassa".
Life during Pangea was different from today. The climate was warmer and the fauna and flora were completely different.
Pangea split about 150 to 220 million years ago into two continents. The northern continent of Laurasia then split into Eurasia and North America, while the southern continent of Gondwana then gave rise to Africa, South America, India, Australia and Antarctica.
Supercontinents existed earlier, for example Rodinia, which disintegrated about 750 million years ago, and according to some predictions, in the future, the continents will reunite into a supercontinent called "Pangea Ultima" in about 250 million years, when Africa, America and Eurasia will collide.






On the agenda today:
0:00 Introduction
3:51 What is a supercontinent?
9:11 The theory of continental drift
19:00 Evidence for the existence of Pangea
27:10 How plate tectonics works
33:43 How was Pangea formed?
36:08 Why did Pangea break up?
45:06 How did the breakup of Pangea affect life on Earth?
48:00 What was the climate like at the time of Pangea?
53:02 The animal world at the time of Pangea
56:40 The plant world at the time of Pangea
1:00:13 Traces of a mass extinction
01:05:10 What would the Earth look like today if Pangea had not broken up?
01:08:18 What will the future supercontinent of the Earth look like?




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