Pangea is by far the most famous and the most recent supercontinent. Spanning from the
Pennsylvanian epoch, the second one in the Carboniferous period to the early Jurassic period, This supercontinent allowed animals and plants to spread and roam all over the land. It has been proven that fossils around this time were
pretty much global and not restricted to specific continents. It formed with the closure of the Rheic Ocean and broke apart with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean.
Before Pangea, there were two continents called Laurasia and Gondwana (sometimes called Gondwanaland), and after Pangea broke apart, there were two continents too, also called well... Laurasia and Gondwana. The early Laurasia and Gondwana are sometimes called Paleolaurasia and Paleogondwana to prevent mixup of the names.
The name of Pangea
originated from Greek where Pan means all and Gaia means earth. The name of Laurasia is made from concatenating the names of the
Laurentia Craton (Today's North America) and Asia. Gondwana means "Land of Gonds (a tribe in India)".