Laurasia Laurasia Laurasia () was the more northern of two supercontinents (the other being Gondwana) that formed part of the Pangaea supercontinent around (Mya). It separated from Gondwana (beginning in the late Triassic period) during the breakup of Pangaea, drifting farther north after the split. The name combines the names of Laurentia, the name given to the North American craton, and Eurasia. As suggested by the geologic naming, Laurasia included most of the land masses which make up today's continents of the Northern Hemisphere, chiefly Laurentia, Baltica, Siberia, Kazakhstania, and the North China and East China cratons. Although Laurasia is known
Gondwana began to rift while the eastern end was still being assembled. The formation of Pangaea and its mountains had a tremendous impact on global climate and sea levels, which resulted in glaciations and continent-wide sedimentation. In North America, the base of the Absaroka sequence coincides with the Alleghanian and Ouachita orogenies and are indicative of a large-scale change in the mode of deposition far away from the Pangaean orogenies. Ultimately, these changes contributed to the Permian–Triassic extinction event and left large deposits of hydrocarbons, coal, evaporite, and metals. The break-up of Pangaea began with the Central Atlantic magmatic province (CAMP)