PANGAEA 225 picture presented here is a current (2004) view of this crisis: a snapshot that doubtless will be refined in the decade to come See Also Analytical Methods: Geochronological Techniques Carbon Cycle Impact Structures Large Igneous Provinces Mesozoic: Triassic; End Cretaceous Extinctions Palaeoclimates Palaeozoic: Permian Sedimentary Environments: Anoxic Environments Further Reading Benton MJ (ed.) (1993) The Fossil Record London: Chapman & Hall Benton MJ (2003) When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of all Time London: Thames and Hudson Benton MJ and Twitchett RJ (2003) How to kill all life: the end Permian extinction event Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18: 358 365 Erwin DH (1993) The Great Paleozoic Crisis: Life and Death in the Permian New York: Columbia University Press Erwin DH (1994) The Permo Triassic extinction Nature 367: 231 236 Erwin DH (1996) Understanding biotic recoveries: extinc tion, survival and preservation during the end Permian mass extinction In: Jablonski D, Erwin DH, and Lipps JH (eds.) Evolutionary Paleobiology, pp 398 418 Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hallam A and Wignall PB (1997) Mass Extinctions and Their Aftermath Oxford: Oxford University Press PANGAEA S G Lucas, New Mexico Museum of Natural History, Albuquerque, NM, USA ß 2005, Elsevier Ltd All Rights Reserved Introduction Geologists apply the term Pangaea (from the Greek words meaning ‘all Earth’, and usually pronounced pan-JEE-uh) to the supercontinent that existed during the Late Palaeozoic and Early Mesozoic, about 300–200 Ma ago Pangaea was an amalgamation of continental blocks that were the precursors of the existing continents, though much of eastern Asia was an archipelago of islands loosely connected to eastern Pangaea Components of Pangaea Pangaea (Figure 1) was accreted from continental blocks that differed from today’s continents The southern supercontinent of Gondwana (also called Gondwanaland) (see Gondwanaland and Gondwana) was the Palaeozoic amalgamation of South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and the IndoPakistani subcontinent, as well as several smaller terranes The northern supercontinent of Laurussia (or Laurasia) consisted of North America and most of Europe Asia, however, did not exist as a single block The continental nucleus of present-day Asia was the Siberian block, but other blocks included Kazakhstan, Tarim, and a loose archipelago of blocks that were to become much of China and South-east Asia Many of these eastern Asian blocks originated as slivers of northern Gondwana and drifted northwards during the Late Palaeozoic and earliest Mesozoic to accrete to the larger Asian blocks during the Late Triassic–Jurassic Pangaea was surrounded by a universal ocean called Panthalassa (from the Greek words meaning ‘all sea’), which was the ancestor of today’s Pacific Ocean The Atlantic Ocean did not exist even in ancestral form, because of the fusions of North America to Europe and of South America to Africa An arm of Panthalassa formed a deep east–west embayment in the eastern edge of Pangaea (Figure 1) This was the Tethys Sea, which is named after the sister and consort of Oceanus in Greek mythology Tethys was the ancestor of the present Mediterranean Sea Successive ocean basins within it are termed Palaeotethys (Devonian–Permian) and Neotethys; the latter opened during the Late Permian as a result of rifting between Gondwana and the smaller central and southern Asian terranes Late Carboniferous Accretion of Pangaea The Pangaean supercontinent came together (accreted) at the end of the Carboniferous (see Palaeozoic: Carboniferous), when Laurussia and Gondwana were sutured along what has been termed the Hercynian megasuture Very old mountain ranges mark the