supercontinent
a hypothetical protocontinent of the remote geologic past that rifted apart to form thecontinents of today.
Origin of supercontinent
1- Compare Pangaea.
Words Nearby supercontinent
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use supercontinent in a sentence
The Triassic Period ended with a bang beginning around 202 million years ago, as the supercontinent Pangea began to break apart.
Feathers may have helped dinosaurs survive the Triassic mass extinction | Carolyn Gramling | July 1, 2022 | Science NewsEurasia, the supercontinent, is being reshaped before our eyes.
So it was that about 300 million years ago, tectonic plates again squeezed together — this time to create a supercontinent called Pangea.
How Earth’s tumultuous history gave the Mid-Atlantic its beloved destinations | Walter Nicklin | June 4, 2021 | Washington PostEventually the supercontinent broke apart, and new mountains grew and exported nutrients again.
Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life | Howard Lee | March 25, 2021 | Quanta MagazineProgress toward complexity stalled during the “boring billion” era, the roughly billion-year reign of the supercontinent Nuna-Rodinia.
Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life | Howard Lee | March 25, 2021 | Quanta Magazine
British Dictionary definitions for supercontinent
/ (ˈsuːpəˌkɒntɪnənt) /
a great landmass thought to have existed in the geological past and to have split into smaller landmasses, which drifted and formed the present continents
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for supercontinent
[ sōō′pər-kŏn′tə-nənt ]
A large continent that, according to the theory of plate tectonics, is thought to have split into smaller continents in the geologic past. The supercontinent Pangaea is believed to have formed when earlier continental landmasses came together sometime before the Permian Period, staying together until after the Triassic Period, when it broke into the smaller supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwanaland. These supercontinents are believed to have later separated into the landmasses that correspond to the current continents. Other supercontinents are hypothesized to have formed and broken apart earlier in geologic time.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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