What is the name of the large land area in earth before it separated into islands and continents?

Question

What is the name of the large land area in earth before it separated into islands and continents?

Answer 1

There are a bunch of names for it, but the most well known and the one that's more easily pronounced is Pangea.

Answer 2

PANGEA!

Answer 3

Pangea

Answer 4

Pangaea, Ultima or, Amasia .

Answer 5

It is called Pangaea.

Answer 6

With the beginning of the 17th

century,outlines of most of the

continents  had been made. The

similarity between the east coast of

South America and the west coast of

Africa attracted the attention of early

explorers and scientists.

Many people including the  English

philosopher  Sir Francis Bacon,history of the Earth. In 1878,  a

scientist named Antonio Snider

Pelligrini supported this view with

substantive evidence.  He  observed

similarities between the fossil plants

of the coal deposits that formed during

the Carboniferous Period  in Europe

and North America. However, these

suggestions could not gain much

recognition in the scientific world.

Ever since the beginning of the 20th

century, several evidences have been

obtained  for the existence of a

supercontinent in the southern

hemisphere.  In 1885, the Austrian

geologist Edward Suess proposed the

name Gondwanaland for that ancient

supercontinent. It covered  the

present Indian Peninsula, the Islands

of  Sri Lanka and Madagascar, and the

continents of Africa, South America

and Antarctica. The similarity of the

deposits left behind by ice sheets that

covered extensive regions of these

land masses between 380 to 250

million years  ago (corresponding to

the end of  the Carboniferous Period

and the beginning of  the Permian

period) as well as the similarity of the

fossils of animals  and plants that lived

prior to that period in these areas, were

the major evidences that indicated the

existence of the  gondwanaland.

Suess believed that, in addition to the

gondwanaland yet another continent

also existed in the southern

hemisphere. It consisted of the present day Australia and the

Patagonia. He gave  the name

'Antactics' to that  continent.  He also

believed that, there probably existed

two more continents in the northern

hemisphere, during that time.

Suess also held the views that by the

process of large scale faulting,

extensive segments of landmass were

detached from the ancestral continents

and they subsequently floundered.

These formed ocean floors and the

remaining masses formed the present

continents. However, where it was

found that the density of the rocks of

the ocean floor is more than that of the

continents, the hypothesis of Sucess

became unacceptable to the scientific

world.

The German meteorologist  Alfred Wegener held the view that the sialic

portion of the crust which comprises the

continental block , slides over the underlying

sima. According to the continental drift theory,

until the end of the Triassic  Period, there was

only a single huge landmass and an ocean  that

encircled it. ‘Pangaea’ was the name given by

Wegener to that continent. For the  ocean that

surrounded  Pangaea,  he gave the name

‘Panthalassa’.

About 200 million years ago Pangaea

broke into two large continents  and began to

drift away from each other.

According to the theory of Wegener,

those two huge continents  drifted away from

each other. As a result of  further breaking

and subsequent  lateral movement (drifting) of

the continental masses, the seven continents

assumed their present position.

Flemish cartographer Abraham

Ortelius and French scientist

Françoise Placet  the 17th

  century,

pointed out similarity between the

continental outlines on both sides of

the Atlantic. This indicated  that the

continents of the western hemisphere

were once united with  Europe and

Africa during some period in the long

Answer 7

Actually, there are two names, representing somewhat different configurations; the other one is Gondwanaland.