Opening of the North Atlantic Ocean Plateau (off Norway), Faroe-Shetland Basin, Hebrides, Outer Moray Firth and Denmark. The supercontinent known as Pangea existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras and began to rift around 200 million years ago. Pangea had three major phases of breakup. The first major phase began in the Early-Middle Jurassic, taking place between North America and Africa. The second major phase of breakup began in the Early Cretaceous. The South Atlantic Ocean opened around 140 million years ago as Africa separated from South America, and about the same time, India separated from Antarctica and Australia, forming the central Indian Ocean.
Early Triassic have revealed that temperatures rose in the first 3 million years of the Triassic, ultimately reaching sea surface temperatures of in the tropics around 249 million years ago. Large and mobile species disappeared from the tropics, and amongst the immobile species such as molluscs, only the ones that could cope with the heat survived; half the bivalves disappeared. On land, the tropics were practically devoid of life. Big, active animals only returned to the tropics, and plants recolonised on land when temperatures returned to normal around 247 million years ago. Early Triassic The Early Triassic is the first of three