The Assembly of Pangea

(to run animation, drag mouse across image)

This animation shows the motions of the continents from the Late Precambrian to the end of the Permian. (Be patient, it may take a couple minutes to download the Java applet and images to your computer.) The blue areas are deep ocean basins. The light blue areas are flooded continental shelves and oceanic plateaus. The tan areas are land, and the red areas are mountains. Watch North America (Laurentia) collide with Northern Europe (Baltica) to form the "Old Red Sandstone" continent. Also note that Pangea began to assemble in the Devonian but was not completely assembled until the early Permian. In the Early Permian, Cimmeria rifts away from the Indo-Australian margin of Gondwana and begins to cross the wide, v-shaped Tethys Ocean.

All these animations are available on CD-ROM in Quicktime format. For more information see Teaching Materials.

These plate reconstructions were produced by the PALEOMAP Project. (images)

This page uses a java applet that displays a VR model. Visit FreedomVR at www.honeylocust.com/vr/ for more information about this applet.