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)".