Abstract
A consensus has emerged that during the Palaeozoic several landmasses progressively collided to form the supercontinent Pangaea, which subsequently split up in the Mesozoic and Tertiary to produce the present array of continents. But whereas there is a high measure of agreement about the general shape of the early Jurassic Pangaea, shortly before the initial Atlantic opening, three very different reconstructions of the end-Palaeozoic supercontinent have recently been proposed. These differences, which involve the relative positions of the northern and southern sectors of Pangaea, known respectively as Laurasia and Gondwana, relate to the interpretation of palaeomagnetic data. The three constructions are here tested with reference to geological and palaeobiogeographic data and arguments.
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Hallam, A. Supposed Permo-Triassic megashear between Laurasia and Gondwana. Nature 301, 499–502 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1038/301499a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/301499a0
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