Pangea was the supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration. Some people know Pangea as the "Supercontinent".

The name was coined in the scientific discussion of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift. In his book "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" he postulated that all the continents had at one time formed a single supercontinent which he called the "Urkontinent", before later breaking up and drifting to their present locations. The term Pangaea appeared in 1928 during a symposium to discuss Alfred Wegener's theory.

Through the upheavals that we have since come to know as plate tectonics, the shifting of the Earth's crust tore the supercontinent asunder about the middle of the Mesozoic period and large bodies of land drifted across the surface of the Earth to ultimately become our present-day continents.   Certain species of terrestrial mammals became isolated, as a result, in Antarctica, South America, Africa and Australia. It would be thousands of years before volcanic eruption would reunite South America with the North American continent again in a land bridge.

By studying the formation and breaking separation of Pangea, scientists can give a picture of what the Earth may look like in millions of yeas time. As land masses move away from each other today, they will one day collide again to form a new supercontinent. Scientisits have dubbed this 'Pangea Ultima' and it may take 250 million years to form.

"Pangea Ultima" will form as a result of the subduction of the ocean floor of the North and South Atlantic beneath eastern North America and South America.  This supercontinent will have a small ocean basin trapped at its center.

An image of what Pangea Ultima may look like in the future.