All continents were together 200 million years ago
Recommended for Middle Grades
Earth’s continents
Children, do you know that Earth’s outer layer (crust) is made up of large, moving pieces called plates?
All of Earth’s land and water sit on these plates. The plates are made of solid rocks. Some plates are also made of melted rocks, which form weak plates. These weaker plates are constantly moving, forming the new crust.
This movement is of two types. One is alongside each other. The second one is when the plates crash into each other.
The crash causes three results. The first one is that one plate slides over the other. The second is, at the crash site, the plates rise and form a mountain. The third is that they move apart from each other.
What is continental drift?
This is when Earth’s tectonic plates move across Earth’s surface for hundreds of millions of years. As the plates move, the continents are on the move, too.
Supercontinents
Scientists think that it takes about 500 million years for all the continents to join together into one big continent. After that, they break apart again. As a result, several supercontinents have formed and broken apart on Earth over time.
The most recent supercontinent was called Pangaea. It formed about 270 million years ago. Slowly, Pangaea broke apart. Rising magma filled in the space. This eventually became the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
A piece of Pangaea called Laurasia became what are now the continents of North America, Europe, and Asia.
The other piece of Pangaea included parts of what are now Antarctica, Africa, South America, and Australia. This part, called Gondwanaland, drifted south.
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