Pangea Day – Geology Style

Published 2008-05-11 by Chris

Pangea was the last great super continent, which existed between the very late Permian (about 250 million years ago) to the end of the Triassic (about 200 million years ago). Pangea was the culmination of all the major continents of the Earth, brought together on one side of the planet, surrounded in what must have seemed like a never-ending ocean called Panthalassa.

On this Pangea Day, as a geologist, or simply as a geologically minded person, or even someone mildly interested in deep time (and passing by YouTube’s event), I proposed you post an image showing where on or about Pangea the bedrock that currently underlies you was sitting. More precisely, where would you be living now if Pangea hadn’t broken up.

Here’s my submission (Mid to late Triassic about 220 million years ago):

My bedrock was almost as far south as you could get, while still having land to stand on.

Where was your bedrock? There’s a fantastic resource for paleogeography at Dr. Ron Blakey’s (of Northern Arizona University) Global Paleogeography project page. Here’s a quick link to the rectangular paleogeography maps – but be sure to take a good look at the other resources there (including the regional paleo maps).

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