Gondwanaland

For hundreds of millions of years, all the land of Earth was joined together in one large mass or super continent. Scientists call it Pangaea (meaning "all lands" in Greek)

Then about 200 million years ago the land began to drift apart. It broke into two pieces, and scientists have called the continent in the north Laurasia and the continent in the south Gondwanaland. Gondwanaland included what we know as Antarctica, which was joined to South America, Africa, India, and Australia.

The two large continents continued to break apart into the smaller continents that exist today. Scientists call this movement 'continental drift'

Go here to see illustrations of how the continents drifted apart
http://library.thinkquest.org/17701/high/pangaea/
http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/historical.html

Gondwanaland was named by Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist. The name he chose was after a district in India where the fossil plant Glossopteris was found. Suess said that because this fossil plant could be found in India, South America, southern Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, then all the lands must once have been joined together.

Gondwanaland was a hot and dry place with rainy seasons. The first tree ferns and coniferous trees appeared there. Dinosaurs lived there at one time too. Read about dinosaurs on the kidcyber dinosaur pages http://www.kidcyber.com.au/topics/dinosaurs.htm

How did the continents move apart?
The top layer of the Earth's crust is made up of large sections called tectonic plates. Some are oceanic plates, located in the oceans, and some are continental plates carrying continents on top of them. The plates all move very very slowly and in different directions. Where they meet is called a boundary. At some boundaries the plates move apart and liquid rock seeps into the valley that results. It hardens and becomes new crust. At some boundaries two plates collide, and one is forced up, forming mountains. The other is forced down and part of it goes into the Earth's core and melts. At other boundaries, the two plates grind together as they pass in different directions, but neither is changed. Earthquakes occur along the boundary as the plates grind each other.

Go here to read more about Plate Tectonics: http://library.thinkquest.org/17701/high/tectonics/index.html

If you use any of this information in your own work, acknowledge it in your bibliography like this:
Sydenham, S. & Thomas, R. Gondwanaland [Online] www.kidcyber.com.au (2004)

Updated October ©kidcyber [2008]