Word Origin & History
Gondwananame of a region in north central India, from Skt. gondavana, from vana "forest" + Gonda, name of a Dravidian people, lit. "fleshy navel, outie belly-button." The name was extended by geologists to a series of sedimentary rocks found there (1873), then to identical rocks in other places; the fossils
EXPAND found in this series were used by geologists to reconstruct the ancient southern supercontinent, which was thus called Gondwanaland (1896), from Ger., where it was coined by Ger. geologist Eduard Suess (18311914) in 1885.
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