Fascinating Geography: Do you know what Pangea is?

I've learned so, so many things by reading the book "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" by Steve Bruchette, including about the history of the world's continents. By that I mean the breakup of the giant continent of Pangea. In today's blog you'll learn about it and its breakup into the continents we all live on today. 

WHAT IS PANGEA?   There was one giant ocean, and one supercontinent or massive landmass. That massive landmass is called Pangea.  
  According to LiveScience.com: About 300 million years ago, Earth didn't have seven continents, but instead one massive supercontinent called Pangea, which was surrounded by a single ocean called Panthalassa.
  The explanation for Pangea's formation ushered in the modern theory of plate tectonics, which posits that the Earth's outer shell is broken up into several plates that slide over Earth's rocky shell, the mantle.
Over the course of the planet's 3.5 billion-year history, several supercontinents have formed and broken up, a result of churning and circulation in the Earth's mantle, which makes up most of planet's volume. This breakup and formation of supercontinents has dramatically altered the planet's history. ;

Pangea's breakup created the world as we know it by about 84 million years ago. 

WHAT CAUSED PANGEA TO BREAK UP? The movement is caused by the convection currents that roll over in the upper zone of the mantle. This movement in the mantle causes the plates to move slowly across the surface of the Earth.

Steve Brusatte author: Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

HOW DO WE KNOW THERE WAS A SUPER CONTINENT? Evidence for Pangaea is found in the geology of adjacent continents, including matching geological trends between the eastern coast of South America and the western coast of Africa. That tells scientists that those two current continents were previously joined. The polar ice cap of the Carboniferous Period covered the southern end of Pangaea.

EARLY DINOSAURS APPEARED ON ALL CURRENT CONTINENTS - That's because at the beginning of the age of dinosaurs (during the Triassic Period, about 230 million years ago) the continents we now know were arranged together as a single supercontinent called Pangea. WhenPangea broke up, dinosaurs evolved differently on different continents. For example, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, one species of tyrannus dinosaurs only developed in the  western U.S. Other types of tyrannuses were found in China and Asia, and all related to the Rex, but not the Rex species itself.

FOR MORE IN PANGEA, VISIT: https://www.livescience.com/38218-facts-about-pangaea.html