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Gondwanaland
Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages of break-up, involving the separation of Antarctica from South America (forming the Drake Passage) and Australia, occurred during the Paleogene. Gondwana was not considered a supercontinent by the earliest definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia, and Siberia were separated from it. To differentiate it from the Indian region of the same name (see ), it is also commonly called Gondwanaland. Gondwana was formed by the accretion of several cratons. Eventually, Gondwana became the largest piece of continental crust of the Palaeozoic Era, covering an area of about , about one-fifth of the Earth's surface. During the Carboniferous Period, it merged with Laurasia to form a larger supercontinent called Pangaea. Gondwana (and P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gondwana 420 Ma
Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages of break-up, involving the separation of Antarctica from South America (forming the Drake Passage) and Australia, occurred during the Paleogene. Gondwana was not considered a supercontinent by the earliest definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia, and Siberia were separated from it. To differentiate it from the Indian region of the same name (see ), it is also commonly called Gondwanaland. Gondwana was formed by the accretion of several cratons. Eventually, Gondwana became the largest piece of continental crust of the Palaeozoic Era, covering an area of about , about one-fifth of the Earth's surface. During the Carboniferous Period, it merged with Laurasia to form a larger supercontinent called Pangaea. Gondwana (and Pang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jurassic
The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era and is named after the Jura Mountains, where limestone strata from the period were first identified. The start of the Jurassic was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, associated with the eruption of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. The beginning of the Toarcian Stage started around 183 million years ago and is marked by an extinction event associated with widespread oceanic anoxia, ocean acidification, and elevated temperatures likely caused by the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces. The end of the Jurassic, however, has no clear boundary with the Cretaceous and is the only boundary between geological periods to remain formally undefined. By the beginning of the Jurassi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East African Orogeny
The East African Orogeny (EAO) is the main stage in the Neoproterozoic assembly of East and West Gondwana (Australia–India–Antarctica and Africa–South America) along the Mozambique Belt. Gondwana assembly The notion that Gondwana was assembled during the Late Precambrian from two older fragments along the Pan-African Mozambique Belt was first proposed in the early 1980s. A decade later this continental collision was named the East African Orogeny, but it was also realised that this was not the simple bringing together of two halves. Rather, it was the piecemeal assembly of several much smaller cratonic elements that once formed an earlier supercontinent (today known as Rodinia), a process that eventually culminated in the relatively short-lived Gondwanan supercontinent. Two partly incomparable scenarios have been proposed for this assembly. In one model, the EAO evolved from an accretionary orogeny involving the amalgamation of arcs and evolved into a collisional oroge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zealandia
Zealandia (pronounced ), also known as (Māori) or Tasmantis, is an almost entirely submerged mass of continental crust that subsided after breaking away from Gondwanaland 83–79 million years ago.Gurnis, M., Hall, C.E., and Lavier, L.L., 2004, Evolving force balance during incipient subduction: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, v. 5, Q07001, https://doi.org/10.01029/02003GC000681 It has been described variously as a submerged continent, a continental fragment (or microcontinent), and a continent. The name and concept for Zealandia was proposed by Bruce Luyendyk in 1995, and satellite imagery shows it to be almost the size of Australia. A 2021 study suggests Zealandia is 1 billion years old, about twice as old as geologists previously thought. By approximately 23 million years ago the landmass may have been completely submerged. Today, most of the landmass (94%) remains submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean. New Zealand is the largest part of Zealandia that is above se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eduard Suess
Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 - 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and the Tethys Ocean. Biography Eduard Suess was born on 20 August 1831 in London, England, the oldest son of Adolph Heinrich Suess, a Lutheran Saxon merchant, and mother Eleonore Friederike Zdekauer. Adolph Heinrich Suess was born on 11 March 1797 in Saxony, Holy Roman Empire and died on 24 May 1862 in Vienna, Austrian Empire, German confederation; Eleonore Friederike Zdekauer was born in Prague, nowadays part of the Czech Republic, which once belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian Empire. When Eduard Suess was born, his family relocated to Prague, and then to Vienna when he was 14. He became interested in geology at a young age. While working as an assistant at the Hofmuseum in Vienna, he published his first paper—on the g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supercontinent
In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. However, some geologists use a different definition, "a grouping of formerly dispersed continents", which leaves room for interpretation and is easier to apply to Precambrian times. To separate supercontinents from other groupings, a limit has been proposed in which a continent must include at least about 75% of the continental crust then in existence in order to qualify as a supercontinent. Supercontinents have assembled and dispersed multiple times in the geologic past (see table). According to modern definitions, a supercontinent does not exist today; the closest in existence to a supercontinent is the current Afro-Eurasian landmass, which covers approx. 57% of Earth's total land area. The last time the continental landmasses were near to one another was 336 to 175 million years ago as the supercontinent, Pangaea. The positions of continents h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neoproterozoic
The Neoproterozoic Era is the unit of geologic time from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago. It is the last era of the Precambrian Supereon and the Proterozoic Eon; it is subdivided into the Tonian, Cryogenian, and Ediacaran periods. It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic Era and succeeded by the Paleozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon. The most severe glaciation known in the geologic record occurred during the Cryogenian, when ice sheets may have reached the equator and formed a "Snowball Earth". The earliest fossils of complex multicellular life are found in the Ediacaran Period. These organisms make up the Ediacaran biota, including the oldest definitive animals in the fossil record. According to Rino and co-workers, the sum of the continental crust formed in the Pan-African orogeny and the Grenville orogeny makes the Neoproterozoic the period of Earth's history that has produced most continental crust. Geology At the onset of the Neoproterozoic the supercontinent Rod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. It is characterized by the dominance of archosaurian reptiles, like the dinosaurs; an abundance of conifers and ferns; a hot greenhouse climate; and the tectonic break-up of Pangaea. The Mesozoic is the middle of the three eras since complex life evolved: the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic. The era began in the wake of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the largest well-documented mass extinction in Earth's history, and ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, another mass extinction whose victims included the non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mosasaurs, and plesiosaurs. The Mesozoic was a time of significant tectonic, climatic, and evolutionary activity. The era witnessed the gradual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wegener Fossils-mapped
Wegener may refer to: Astronomy * 29227 Wegener, a main-belt asteroid * Wegener (lunar crater) * Wegener (Martian crater) Places * Wegener Range, an Antarctic mountain range * Mount Wegener, an Antarctic mountain in the Read Mountains in the Shackleton Range * Wegener Canyon, an undersea canyon * Wegener Halvo Formation, a geologic formation in Greenland Businesses * Wegener (company), a Dutch media conglomerate * Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research Medicine * Wegener's granulomatosis, now known as granulomatosis with polyangiitis People * Alfred Wegener (1880–1930), German geologist who originated the theory of continental drift * ''Kapitänleutnant'' Bernhard Wegener, commander of German submarine ''U-27'', killed in one of the two Baralong incidents in 1915 * Bertha Frensel Wegener (1874–1953), Dutch composer and music educator * Bobby Wegener, American lawyer and Oklahoma's Secretary of Energy from 2008-2011 * Manuela (singer) (194 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kuunga Orogeny
The Kuunga orogeny (from Swahili, "to unite") was an orogeny that occurred in South-east Africa during the Ediacaran and Cambrian. Composed of three separate orogenic belts (Damara, Zambesi, and Lurio) that are slightly younger than the East African orogeny, the Kuunga orogeny documents the collision between north and south Gondwana, or what is today Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica and northern Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ... in Africa. The name was proposed in 1995 by J. G. Meert, R. van der Voo and S. Ayub. References Sources * * {{Tectonics-stub Orogenies of Africa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brasiliano Orogeny
Brasiliano orogeny or Brasiliano cycle ( pt, Orogênese Brasiliana and ''Ciclo Brasiliano'') refers to a series of orogenies of Neoproterozoic age exposed chiefly in Brazil but also in other parts of South America. The Brasiliano orogeny is a regional name for the larger Pan-African/Brasiliano orogeny that extended not only in South America but across most of Gondwana. In a wide sense the Brasiliano orogeny includes also the Pampean orogeny. Almeida ''et al''. coined the term Brasiliano Orogenic Cycle in 1973. The orogeny led to the closure of several oceans and aulacogens including the Adamastor Ocean, the Goianides Ocean, the Puncoviscana Ocean and the Peri-Franciscano Ocean. Attempts to correlate the South American Brasiliano belts with the African Pan-African belts on the other side of the Atlantic has in many cases been problematic. Belts and belt provinces }) , Northeast Brazil, Southeast Brazil , São Francisco Craton , , The Araçuaí Belt is the west portion of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Landmass
A landmass, or land mass, is a large region or area of land. The term is often used to refer to lands surrounded by an ocean or sea, such as a continent or a large island. In the field of geology, a landmass is a defined section of continental crust extending above sea level. Continents are often thought of as distinct landmasses and may include any islands that are part of the associated continental shelf. When multiple continents form a single contiguous land connection, the connected continents may be viewed as a single landmass. Earth's largest landmasses, from largest to smallest, are: # Africa-Eurasia # America (continent) # Antarctica # Australia See also * Coastline paradox * Continent ** Boundaries between the continents of Earth * Island ** List of islands by area * Landform ** Glossary of landforms * Mainland * Supercontinent In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continental blocks or cratons to form a single large lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
