Pangaea Pangaea Pangaea or Pangea () was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from earlier continental units approximately 335 million years ago, and it began to break apart about 175 million years ago. In contrast to the present Earth and its distribution of continental mass, much of Pangaea was in the southern hemisphere and surrounded by a superocean, Panthalassa. Pangaea was the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists. The name "Pangaea/Pangea" is derived from Ancient Greek "pan" (, "all, entire, whole") and "Gaia" (, "Mother
Karoo Ice Age Karoo Ice Age The Karoo Ice Age, more commonly referred to as the Late Paleozoic Ice Age, from 360–260 million years ago (Mya) was the second major ice age of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is named after the tillite (Dwyka Group) found in the Karoo Basin of South Africa, where evidence for this ice age was first clearly identified in the 19th century. The tectonic assembly of the continents of Euramerica (later with the Uralian orogeny, into Laurasia) and Gondwana into Pangaea, in the Hercynian-Alleghany Orogeny, made a major continental land mass within the Antarctic region, and the closure of