As the southern part of the pangea supercontinent is called. Pangea

Continent killer

In early July, almost every Internet site that tells about the discoveries, a sensationally frightening message appeared: Spanish scientists have solved one of the main mysteries in the history of planet Earth.

In the new issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, they published a material in which they answered a long-standing question for science: why did the protocontinent Pangea split into two parts, from which the six continents familiar to us later appeared? What is scary here?

Spanish version

According to the Spaniards, the grandiose action took place about 150 - 220 million years ago, when the supercontinent washed by the Pantalassa ocean broke up into two parts - northern (Laurasia) and southern (Gondwana).

The reasons were very different - from the overheating of the mantle, which caused the movement of tectonic plates, to the collision of the planet with a meteorite, which fell exactly in the center of the giant continent.

Gabriel Guteres-Alonso of the University of Salamanca and his colleagues consider these theories unfounded and propose their hypothesis.

According to the generally accepted version, the continent of Pangea at one time, about 350 million years ago, itself originated from the collision of two continents - the very Laurasia and Gondwana, into which it later disintegrated.

In the places of this collision, two ancient mountain systems appeared - the Urals and the Appalachians, which were then much higher than today.

However, the collision did not end: the counter movement of lithospheric plates continued, as a result of which the continental shelf of the former southern continent completely went under the northern part of the land. In science, this process is called self-absorption.

Such a powerful resistance of the two continents caused such a tremendous tension in the center of the new continent they created, that the earth's surface could not stand it and bowed out with a new mountain range.

This was the beginning of the end: the tension grew further, and Pangea could not withstand it. An attempt to consume itself ended in a new rift.

We can say that no Pangea existed, just Laurasia and Gondwana "grappled" in a battle for 200 million years, and then disintegrated again.

There is a theory that about once every 500 million years, all continents gather into one supercontinent. So we have about half of that time left before Eurasia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and the Americas unite in Pangea.

The directions of movement of the continents, which are now being recorded, indicate that it will be so. The killer of continents is ready to break out of the ground.

Bomb underfoot

Against the background of picturesque stories about how we will all be flooded, if before that it will not be torn to shreds by a collision with an asteroid, this is another version of the apocalypse. This time right under our feet.

A new “end of the world” is supposedly slowly but surely approaching humanity. The time bomb is under our feet - in the bowels of the earth.

That this force can be destructive is incredible, convinced by the latest earthquake in China. The so-called D layer, which lies at a depth of 2.7 thousand km on the border of the earth's core and mantle, scientists call the cemetery of the continents.

Because there the ancient plates of the earth's crust met their end, millions of years ago, they went into this abyss and melted with matter, the temperature of which is comparable to the temperature of the Sun. And now they believe that a similar fate awaits today's America and Eurasia.

Evidence that the land has once been swallowed up by magma comes from the remnants of the ancient earth's crust, thrown onto the planet's surface along with lava during a volcanic eruption in Hawaii.

Regions with increased volcanic activity top the list of likely candidates for victims of the underground element.
The researchers concluded that the influence of the "underworld" on what is happening on the planet is much stronger than previously thought.

Oscillations of the D layer, which is some 200 km thick, are the reason for the increase in seismic activity on the planet, and on a scale hitherto unseen.

This is not about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It is about the birth and death of continents. This is evidenced by the results of a computer experiment.

In addition to the Spaniards, a similar study was carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of Geophysics by Ulrich Hansen and Kai Stemmer.

The model, created by scientists, is based on formulas describing the activity taking place in the bowels of the earth. The exact temperature at this depth is still unknown, so the researchers were forced to prepare several possible options.

However, at any temperature occurring in the D-layer, according to calculations, there will be fluctuations in the mantle. They are causing a movement that can lead to dramatic consequences for the continents.

The scenario looks frightening: first the land will go under water, and then it will fall into the bowels of the earth, and new continents will come to replace the Americas, Eurasia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. But there will be no one to name them.

The British are confident: the United States will be the first

People will die out after a powerful volcanic eruption, British scientists echo their colleagues. The UK Government's Disaster Management Working Group came to similar conclusions after conducting a study.

The apocalypse is not far off, but in themselves. The authors of the report argue that the volcanic eruptions that scientists have observed so far are seeds compared to what the old Earth is capable of.

There have been eruptions hundreds of times more powerful on the planet. After each of them, huge territories turned out to be buried under a thick layer of lava, dust and ash rose into the atmosphere and prevented the penetration of sunlight.

As a result, it became much colder on our planet. The last time an eruption of such a catastrophic scale disturbed the planet 74 thousand years ago.

It happened in Sumatra and ended badly - a volcanic winter came. It became especially cold in the Northern Hemisphere. Needless to say, a sad story.

But it becomes even sadder from the realization that there is no way to prevent the repetition of such a catastrophe. Moreover, it is impossible even to indicate for sure the region in which the elements will strike.

The authors of the report cautiously assume that it will be the United States. Perhaps this hypothesis arose because scientists of this particular country conducted the most fundamental research on their own volcanoes and their activity.

The British have no doubts that a super-eruption will certainly happen. And the wait is not so long. As scientists have found out, giant volcanoes wake up about once every 100 thousand years.

By the way, our planet meets giant meteorites five times less often - no more than one in half a million years. Here's a bad luck: everyone is repeating aloud, they say, it will be soon, but no one gives the exact date.

Prepared by Marina KUDRYASHOVA
based on materials from Internet sites
Collage of Lyudmila MANURINA

Civilization emerged 600 million years ago.

Civilization stopped resisting the aggressively changed environment 180 million years ago - the end.

Pangea is All-Earth. Giant Protocontinent, which included Gondwana.

Pangea is the name given by Alfred Wegener to the proto-continent that arose in the Paleozoic era.

The German geologist Suess christened this continent with the name of Gondwana, but nowadays it is more commonly used - Pangea.

Gondwana originated approximately 530-750 million years ago. It was located around the South Pole for a long time.

In the early Paleozoic, it gradually shifted to the north and merged in the Carboniferous period (360 million years ago) with the North American-Scandinavian continent in the giant protocontinent Pangea.

The name Gondwana remained behind one of the continents into which Pangea split 180 million years ago.

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ZThe land of Pan was the culmination of success with regard to experimentation and interbreeding of different DNA strands. This was the paradise or "Garden of Eden", described by religious books. Between 200 and 20 million years ago, most of the Earth was covered in tropical jungle. Evidence of this can be seen by examining geological formations, especially in desert areas.

INin most places, the earthly world was bathed in water and dense vegetation. Even the polar regions were teeming with life.

Gthe umanoid form was planted about 100 million years ago, in the middle of the jungle period. These were small groups of humanoids who lived in relatively small areas of the Earth. The humanoids were seventh density beings, with wings and highly developed telepathic and psychic abilities. They lived in paradise.

Oneither got food directly from the sunlight, but swallowed water in their pores. They needed nothing but each other. In religious scriptures, this world is called the Garden of Eden.

INLife forms were varied at that time and there was an abundance of them. About 60 million years ago, dinosaurs were killed when comet Arunatak made its 10,500-year cycle and came too close to Earth during its passage. The resulting cold snap destroyed most of the vegetation, but the Earth, with its amazing ability to heal itself, was able to bounce back and provide another fertile period.

INAt that time, there were only a few hundred thousand humanoid forms on Earth, and most of them went underground, where, with the help of various Pleiadian factions, they created an underground world of great beauty and complexity. This is where the legends of the "inner earth" originate.

Osome of them have legends, including Pegasus and Centaur. Some creatures were descended from dinosaurs and early reptiles. Dragons entered folklore from two sources - Pangea and the Draconic invasion. The early dragons were reptilian creatures that evolved alongside the dinosaurs. They were genetically manipulated by different groups of aliens. Later, the Dragon civilization came to Earth in its reptilian form, began to interbreed and create exotic dragon forms.

NSThe adenia of Pangea happened when the "Sons of God" (seventh density Pleiadians) incarnated in the evolving humanoid forms on Earth and forgot about their divine connection. Prior to their incarnation of the seventh density Pleiadians, the humanoid forms possessed a primitive consciousness, somewhere between second and third density. Evolutionary scientists view the change brought about by the Pleiadian incarnation as an unexplained mutation that marks the difference between primates and humans.

INthe entrenched Pleiadians interbred with different creatures; this is how half-horses, half-humans, and many others appeared. The fairy kingdom was one of the side branches of this cross. Seventh density souls "clothed" a humanoid form with wings. When they crossed with four-legged creatures, one of the results was the Pegasus, or winged horse.

TOWhen humanoid Pleiadian souls lowered their vibration, their wings atrophied, along with telepathic and other abilities. More and more, they became similar to the creatures developing on Earth - more animal in nature and less capable of expressing higher intelligent thinking abilities.

INDuring the time of Pan or Pangea, as it is sometimes called, DNA experiments continued, and no keepers were built into the "Earth laboratory". This meant that different life forms could interbreed and create other exotic mixtures and hybrids.

INAt that time, your world of Earth was inhabited by many strange creatures, and all of them were the result of genetic experiments and interspecies crossing.

Gthe gigantic ocean that washed Pangea is called Panthalassa.

WITHsupercontinents have existed before, for example, Rodinia, which disintegrated 750 million years ago.

NSAccording to some forecasts, in the future the continents will once again gather in a supercontinent called Pangea Ultima.

NSangea Ultima (Last Pangea) is a hypothetical supercontinent, into which, according to some forecasts, all current continents will merge in 200 million years.

BUTThe second term "Pangea Ultima" and the theory of its appearance belong to the American geologist Christopher Scotese, who studied the history of lithospheric plates.

WITHthis theory intersects with the theory of Amazia, the future continent from Eurasia and North America, which will become the core of the future supercontinent.

TThe theory of the emergence of the future supercontinent is based on several scientific achievements:

1 ... The study of the history of plate movement has shown that with a period of 500-600 million years, blocks of continental crust are collected into a single supercontinent.

2 ... The direction of movement of modern continents was determined by various independent methods. By extrapolating this data, it is possible to calculate when the continents will collide with each other.

In 250 million years, the North American continent will turn counterclockwise and Alaska will find itself in the subtropical belt. Eurasia will continue to rotate clockwise, and the British Isles will be in the North Pole, while Siberia will be in the subtropics. The Mediterranean Sea will close, and in its place mountains are formed, comparable in height to the Himalayas. Pangea Ultima will be 90 percent desert covered. In the northwest and southeast of the continent, there will be giant mountain ranges.

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According to the latest estimates of scientists, at the end of the Permian period, from 93% to 97% of all inhabitants of the sea and almost two-thirds of land animals and plants died on the planet. A terrible catastrophe 252 million years ago practically destroyed the ancient forests. Today, the cause of the greatest mass extinction of all time is one of the greatest mysteries for paleontologists.

According to scientists from the China Geological University (中国地 质 大学 ) the death of most of the planet's biomass was the result of the formation of a supercontinent - Pangea.

In their article published in the journal Science China, Earth Sciences, the authors write that at present, researchers from all over the world have accumulated a sufficient amount of evidence of severe climatic changes on Earth 252 million years ago. Among the main indicators: a sharp decrease in the oxygen saturation of the World Ocean and an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - carbon dioxide and methane.

Due to intense acid rain, the chemical composition of sea water changed, which killed corals, and the land, as a result of climate warming, gradually turned into a lifeless desert. The cataclysm dragged on for millennia, and the climatic pendulum swung in one direction or the other: periods of warming were replaced by a cold snap.

According to the theory of scientists from the Middle Kingdom, the source of all the troubles was the large-scale movement of tectonic plates that occurred 50 million years before the onset of the listed cataclysms. During mutual collisions, part of the plates sank into the mantle, which was accompanied by a thickening of the earth's crust and an increase in the depth of the World Ocean.

It was then, at the beginning of the Permian period, about 300 million years ago, that these geological processes caused an inversion of the Earth's magnetic field when the planet's magnetic poles were reversed. More importantly, a large amount of cold matter ended up in the mantle, where a kind of "plume" was formed from them.

For millions of years, due to thermal convection, part of the substance of this "plume" has found its way to the surface. This happened for the first time 251 million years ago on the territory of modern Siberia, when lava covered more than 4 million square kilometers of the Earth - a huge area corresponding to the area of ​​seven Frances.

Another similar hole in the earth's crust was formed 260 million years ago in the south of modern China. It is these two eruptions that occurred as a result of the massive convergence of tectonic plates that Chinese scientists call the source of all those misfortunes in the form of greenhouse gases and acid rain that hit the planet even before the dinosaurs appeared on it.

We add that not all experts agree with the opinion of their Chinese colleagues. The most criticized is the time gap of 50 million years between the formation of Pangea and volcanic eruptions. Some scientists believe that the reasons should be looked for chronologically closer to the extinction itself.

In the picture above, you can see what Pangea might look like with existing country borders.

Pangea ("all-earth") is a supercontinent that existed at the end of the Paleozoic and the beginning of the Mesozoic and united almost the entire land of the Earth. The name was suggested by Alfred Wegener.

During the formation of Pangea, mountain systems arose from the more ancient continents at the places of their collision. Some of them have survived to this day, for example, the Urals or the Appalachians. These mountains are much older than such 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 lasting for many millions of years, the Urals and Appalachians are severely destroyed and low.

The giant ocean that washed Pangea is called Panthalassa.

Pangea was formed in the Permian period, and split at the end of the Triassic, about 200-210 million years ago, into two continents. The northern continent of Laurasia later split into Eurasia and North America, while Africa, South America, India, Australia and Antarctica later emerged from the southern continent of Gondwana.

It should be noted that supercontinents existed earlier, for example, Rodinia, which disintegrated 750 million years ago.

According to some forecasts, in the future, the continents will once again gather in a supercontinent called Pangea Ultima, unless, of course, the events that make it widely known take place.

Pangea Ultima (Latin Pangea Ultima - "Last Pangea") is a hypothetical supercontinent, into which, according to some forecasts, all the present continents will merge in 200-300 million years.

This theory intersects with the theory of Amazia, the future continent from Eurasia and North America, which will become the core of the future supercontinent.

In some Russian publications, this continent is called in translation "The Last Pangea" (see figure below).

G. ALEXANDROVSKY. Based on materials from the German magazine "Bild der Wissenschaft".

EARTH MOSAIC

Tectonic platforms are marked on the map.

The ancient continent of Pangea split 180 million years ago.

The same updraft that split Gondwana 150 million years ago is now doing so with the African continent.

The Hawaiian Islands sit above a hot magmatic updraft. It lifted the bottom to the surface of the ocean and makes the oceanic platform move.

Magma, heated to a thousand degrees, is involved in giant gyres.

Today every schoolchild knows that seemingly motionless continents and islands are in continuous motion. True, the continents do not wander by themselves, as the German geophysicist Alfred Wegener, the author of the first scientifically developed hypothesis (1912) of continental drift, imagined. They move along with the adjacent areas of the ocean floor. The force driving the giant plates is the updrafts of molten magma that heats up in the deep layers of the Earth. Rising upward, the streams hit the lower surface of the earth's crust. At the same time, they diverge and drag along with them in different directions the tectonic plates lying above them. The entire earth's crust is composed of such plates. It turns out something like a moving mosaic. Its fragments collide with each other, one plate sinks under the other - "dives".

Measurements, which were carried out from satellites, showed that the continents move on average not by 1-5 centimeters per year, as previously thought, but much faster. For example, the southern part of Latin America is moving towards the Pacific Ocean at a speed of 17 centimeters per year.

The theory of continental drift - "Plate tectonics" - today has already helped to understand many phenomena in the geology of the Earth. Explanations of some mysterious phenomena on our planet were obtained by geotectonists quite recently.

ONE HYPOTHESIS REPLACES ANOTHER

180 million years ago, all the current continents constituted a single giant continent, Pangea. Then he split and gave birth to two huge continents - Gondwana and Laurasia. Those, in turn, also disintegrated, then the present continents were born.

Why did Pangea split? Was she a victim of her enormous size? Some scientists compare our planet in this situation to a car tire, which has a huge swelling on one side. Inequality of centrifugal forces led to the split of the lithosphere, after which its parts "spread" across the planet.

Now the question is: why are the continents splitting? - found another answer.

If the flow of hot magma, during its upward movement, encounters a massive continental crust with a thickness of 30 to 70 kilometers, then it behaves differently than when it rests against the oceanic crust, the thickness of which is only 5-10 kilometers. In the oceans zone, the heat that magma carries with it is absorbed not only by the crust, but also by the ocean water. Under the continents, where the crust is several tens of kilometers thick, heat accumulates. And it begins to act from below on the bark, approximately like a gas cutter on metal: it melts, cuts it into pieces. Magma currents in their movement capture these parts of the continent and separate them from each other.

HOW LIKE THE YOUNG EARTH?

The ocean bottom is presented to scientists as a snow-covered area to a hunter: it is full of footprints and treacherous pits. The footprints left by the Earth's magnetic field on the ocean floor in young rocks, before they hardened, can show the speed and direction of movement of a particular oceanic plate. The crust in the ocean is never older than 200 million years. Compared to the age of the Earth itself (4.5 billion years), this is like two weeks and a whole year. And yet, studying the oceanic crust, we seem to go back 180 million years and see what the Earth looked like during the time of Pangea. Is it possible to deepen this journey into the past even further?

Paleontologists are trying to do this. But here both not very reliable data and detective assumptions are already being used. Explore the fragments of rocks, on which at the time of their cooling, the lines of the magnetic field were imprinted. This gives information at what latitude the stone originally lay. Then they find similar data in other stones. And it is assumed that they cooled down somewhere near and simultaneously with the first sample, although later they could be separated thousands of kilometers from each other. Findings of biological nature can say something. But there is also a time limit, because earlier than 550 million years ago, there were no living beings on Earth. Except for unicellular organisms.

American geologist B. Morphy suggests that all continents converge every 500 million years and, therefore, Pangea was born many times. The scientist is based on the fact that it was in this rhythm that all large mountain ranges arose on Earth. They were formed as a result of the collision of continents. There is a weak point in this hypothesis: have the laws, according to which the plates now drift, always operated, as they do now? The oldest witnesses of tectonic activity are 1.8 billion years old. These are the plates on which the Baltic and Canadian shields are located. Scientists are convinced that their origin is associated with the processes of collision and immersion. But all this happened in the very early years of our Earth, when other laws of plate tectonics could operate.

Professor W. Frisch from the University of Tübingen (Germany) put forward a new hypothesis: on Earth in her youth, the breeds, as now, underwent changes, but then everything happened much faster. Because more energy came to the surface from deep within. The hot planet was covered with crust many times, which was quickly destroyed by magma flows coming from below. Some of the debris drowned, and the lighter ones remained at the top. These cycles were repeated many times, light rocks accumulated. From them the continents were formed.

THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN IS DISAPPEARING. BUT WHERE?

The thin crust beneath the Earth's oceans acts as a dam - closing the gaps between the plates when massive continents diverge. And if the continents go against each other, it disappears under them. Back in the 1950s, it seemed incredible to scientists that the ocean floor several kilometers thick would play such a short role and then disappear into the molten depths. Since then, geologists have been able to obtain a lot of indisputable evidence that subsidence zones of the ocean floor do exist.

Where does the already unnecessary ocean floor go? This issue has spawned a lengthy controversy among experts. In the beginning, when seismological surveys showed that the sinking plates at a depth of about 670 kilometers were breaking, as if hitting a massive "wall", many researchers took this as the final answer to the question. But the professor at the University of Göttingen W. Christensen did not stop there. With the help of a computer model, he showed that the relatively cold stone parts of the slabs at the beginning of the dive do indeed linger at a certain depth, but then slowly begin to sink again.

Seismic tomography also showed that at least part of the submerged plate pierces the "wall" at a depth of 670 kilometers and sinks below. A number of scientists are of the opinion that the former ocean floor goes to a depth of 2,900 kilometers - to the border between the mantle and the outer core of the planet. There from this material "heaps" are deposited with a thickness of 200 to 400 kilometers. On the outer core, washed by convection flows of magma, there are stagnant places, where the material that came from above is collected.

Geologists call these places "plate graveyards" because the sunken rock can lie here for billions of years until the rising convection current carries the material back up.

When asked what is PANGEA? what was BEFORE her and what AFTER ??? given by the author Ms Magic the best answer is Pangea (Greek Πανγαία, all-earth) is the name given by Alfred Wegener to the proto-continent that arose in the Paleozoic era.
In the process of the formation of Pangea, mountain systems arose from the more ancient continents at the places of their collision, some of them have existed to our time, for example, the Urals or the Appalachians. These early mountains are much older than such 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 lasting for many millions of years, the Urals and Appalachians are low-rolling mountains.
The giant ocean that washed Pangea is called Panthalassa.
Pangea split about 150-220 million years ago into two continents. The northern continent of Laurasia later split into Eurasia and North America, while Africa, South America, India, Australia and Antarctica later emerged from the southern continent of Gondwana.
It should be noted that supercontinents existed earlier, for example, Rodinia, which disintegrated 750 million years ago.
According to some forecasts, in the future the continents will once again gather in a supercontinent called Pangea Ultima.
Pangea section
Pangea

Answer from User deleted[guru]
a single continent eventually split into the continents that are now

Answer from Spathi[guru]
Pangea is the oldest continent, which arose due to the tectonics of lithospheric plates. What happened after it is clearly seen in the following animation:
And before her there were still super-continents. Rodinia, for example. Scientists have put forward the theory that continents tend to scatter and converge together with some frequency. In the future, the continents are also expected to come together again. This hypothetical mainland is called the Pangea Ultima:

Answer from ERDETREU[guru]
1.1 billion years ago, the supercontinent Rodinia and the giant ocean Mirovia emerged.
Rodinia disintegrated 750 million years ago.
in the Paleozoic era, the protocontinent Pangea arose from parts of Rodinia.
150-220 million years ago Pangea split into two continents: Laurasia and Gondwana.
135-200 million years ago, Laurasia disintegrated into the modern continents: Eurasia and North America.
30 million years after the collapse of Pangea, Gondwana disintegrated into the modern continents: Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and the subcontinent (an island that later merged with southern Eurasia) India.
in 300 million years, if the current speed of movement of the continents remains, a new supercontinent may arise: Pangea Ultima.

Answer from KTK[guru]
1. Rodinia (1100-750 million years ago), surrounded by the superocean Mirovia, falling apart in several stages, but in the end these pieces of land collided again, forming
2. Pannotia (600-540 million years ago), surrounded by the Pan-African Ocean, disintegrated into Laurentia, Baltic, Siberia and Gondwana, which reunited into
3. Pangea (250-237 million years ago), the history of which is already known to us.

Answer from YEAR OF THE CENTURY[newbie]
Before Pangea, there were small islands that connected in the process.

Answer from Alexei[active]
The last super continent that fell to pieces 180 million years ago, scientists call "Pangea", which in Greek means "the whole Earth." It seems that Pangea was surrounded on all sides by a giant, planetary ocean, the predecessor of the modern Pacific Ocean.
There may have been other super continents before Pangea. Each of them existed for about 80 million years, and then began to disintegrate. Scientists say that such giant continental faults occurred for two reasons: the action of the heat of the incandescent core of the Earth and the rotation of our planet. Some of the heat rising from the bowels of the Earth is trapped by the super continent.
Some scientists argue that in 300 million years, the Atlantic Ocean will completely disappear. By then, the east coast of the United States of America will be the new Midwest, 4,800 kilometers from the nearest ocean. Continents that seemingly stand so firmly in place are actually moving. About once every 500 million years, continents collide. During this universal collision, the coastlines rise to the sky like mountain ranges. The next time this happens, all the continents will merge into one huge continent, surrounded on all sides by the World Ocean.