510 Mya
Formation of Gondwana

The concept of Supercontinents is relatively recent (Human time). The first attempts to re-assemble them using geological concepts was in 1915 (Alfred Wegener).

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Gondwana or Gondwanaland was initially part of a much larger supercontinent, Pangaea, which itself was part of a much larger Rhodinia supercontinent.

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The process known as Continental Drift (as part of the Plate Tectonic process) moves continents across the earth’s mantle in ”conveyor-belt” style, propelled by the ocean crust and its underlying lithosphere. New ocean crust is created at mid-ocean ridges and is destroyed at subduction zones, producing new continental crust. 

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When Pangaea broke up it formed two larger fragments of Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. The fragments dispersed into an ocean, the ancestral Pacific or Panthalassa Ocean, which continues to be consumed along its margins in the “Ring of Fire” (Figure 1).