The Changing Face of the Earth (English version)

The Changing Face of the Earth

The break-up of Pangea and the mobility of the continents over the last 250 million years, in 11 maps.

250 million years ago, at the beginning of the Secondary Era - that of the great saurians - the continents were grouped together in a single mega-set, Pangea, surrounded by a mega-ocean, Panthalassa. The faces that we will discover in this booklet (plates 1 to 11 in Mollweide projection) constitute (among the most significant) a selection and a condensed view of the break-up of this supercontinent and cover the period from -250 Ma to the Quaternary. Eleven milestones that illustrate the path of the different continental blocks, leading to the geological face of our planet today.

The Changing Face of the Earth

This document is based on recent scientific work originally intended for specialists. We felt that it might be useful to give it a more accessible form for a wider audience, such as high schools and undergraduate and graduate students. For this reason, we have tried to present the text and the comments in a more pedagogical, and therefore relatively simplified, form.