Pangaea was the supercontinent that assembled by the late Paleozoic and contained most of Earth's continental land. It began breaking apart roughly 200 million years ago, eventually producing today's Atlantic Ocean and continental arrangement.

Pangaea was not the only supercontinent, and Gondwana was not simply an earlier name for Pangaea: Gondwana was a long-lived southern continental assemblage that later formed a major part of Pangaea.

Alfred Wegener argued for continental drift in 1912, using the fit of continental margins and matching fossils, rocks, and paleoclimate indicators across oceans. His proposal was resisted largely because he lacked a convincing mechanism.

The decisive framework arrived in the mid-20th century with plate tectonics. Seafloor mapping, magnetic stripes, earthquake/volcano belts, and seafloor spreading showed that rigid lithospheric plates move over geological time.

How can we reconstruct ancient continents?

Paleogeographic reconstructions are evidence-based, not freehand mapmaking. Geologists compare the shapes of continental margins, especially the edges of continental shelves rather than modern coastlines; match fossils found on now-separated continents; trace corresponding rock units and mountain belts across oceans; and use glacial deposits and other paleoclimate clues to infer former latitude and climate.

Paleomagnetism adds another constraint: as rocks form, magnetic minerals can record the direction of Earth's magnetic field, preserving evidence of ancient latitude and plate orientation. For younger ocean basins, seafloor spreading, magnetic stripes, fracture zones, and measured plate motions provide a much tighter record.

The farther back in time a reconstruction goes, the more uncertainty grows, because crust is destroyed, deformed, buried, or overprinted. A Pangaea map is therefore a constrained scientific reconstruction, not a satellite photo of the past.

Typical plate speeds are only a few centimeters per year — about the rate fingernails grow — but over 100 million years, 3 cm/year amounts to about 3,000 km.