Gondwanaland

What is Gondwanaland?

When I first started making this website, I took it for granted that everyone knows what Gondwana is. I have since learned that not everyone does..

Gondwana was one of the supercontinents in the Earth's history, and Australia was a part of it.

As you would likely know, the Earth's crust consists of tectonic plates that are in very slow but constant movement.

They move because magma, which is the liquid substance under the Earth's crust, moves due to local changes in pressures and temperatures. They move in different directions.

At the boundaries where two plates collide, mountains are built. At the boundaries where two plates drift apart, magma rises to the surface, forms into solid rock, and turns into Earth's crust.

At some other boundaries one plate may glide in under the other etc.. Over millions and millions of years, those movements move continents around.

At one stage, about 250 million years ago, all the Earth's continents were joined together in the supercontinent Pangaea.

About 200 million years ago, Pangaea was broken into two new supercontients - the northern Laurasia, and the southern Gondwana.

Laurasia contained the contients that today are found in the Northern Hemisphere, except India.

Gondwana contained the contients that today are found in the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica, South America, Australia), plus Africa and India.