Pangaea was the supercontinent that brought most of Earth’s landmasses together before they separated. It formed during the late Paleozoic Era and began breaking apart during the early Mesozoic Era.
The name Pangaea comes from Greek roots meaning “all Earth.” The German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the idea of continental drift in 1912, arguing that the continents had once formed a single landmass. Evidence included the matching shapes of coastlines, similar fossils on now-separated continents, and related rock formations across the Atlantic.
Pangaea was surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa. A large embayment on its eastern side was known as the Tethys Sea. As tectonic plates moved, Pangaea split into northern Laurasia and southern Gondwana, which later fragmented into the continents recognized today.
Gondwana and Laurasia were not alternatives to Pangaea in the same sense: they were major landmasses created during its breakup. Rodinia was an older proposed supercontinent that existed hundreds of millions of years earlier.