Tag Archives: Geological Time Scale

Pangea (Pangaea)

Pangea_USGS This is a public domain image of Pangea, by Pangea USGS public domain clipart image @ wpclipart.com.  Pangea was a super-continent which began to form around 300 million years ago, and which began to break apart about 200 million years ago, so it existed for about 100 million years.

800px-Geological_Time_Scale This image is from a Wikipedia article on the Geological Time Scale as viewed on April 21, 2014. Wikipedia reveals that this time frame encompassed land plants, including coal forming ones, and land animals including lizards during the upper Paleozoic Era.  Most fossil fuels formed during the warm and wet  Carboniferous Period of the upper Paleozoic Era

About halfway through the existence of Pangea, the Paleozoic Era became the lower Mesozoic Era, during which time conifers evolved on land and dinosaurs emerged.  The lower Mesozoic encompasses the time of the Triassic, just before the Jurassic, of Jurassic Park fame.