Supercontinent

In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. However, many earth scientists use a different definition: "a clustering of nearly all continents", which leaves room for interpretation and is easier to apply to Precambrian times. Supercontinents have assembled and dispersed multiple times in the geologic past (see table). According to the modern definitions, a supercontinent does not exist today. The supercontinent Pangaea is the collective name describing all of the continental landmasses when they were most recently near to one another. The positions of continents have been accurately determined back to the early Jurassic, shortly before the breakup of Pangaea (see animated image). The earlier continent Gondwana is not considered a supercontinent under the first definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia and Siberia were separate at the time.