Pangea
Bryce VanLangen
Mrs.Keehn
Pangea
was the super continent on the planet during the Mesozoic period. It consisted of all of today’s continents all
pushed together on one side of the earth.
It is inevitable that Pangea will form again whether man is there to see
it or not. The continents are still
moving. For example, Hawaii is moving
away from the lower 48 at a rate of approximately 2 inches per year.
The climate of Pangea
was very different from today’s climate. The temperature on Pangea would swing
wildly between seasons. In the summer
the temperature could reach highs of over 150 degrees. This was due to a super green house effect. Estimates say that C02 levels were as high as
10 times the levels seen today. If you
could travel back in time to the Mesozoic period, you would see massive plant
life and dinosaurs. At the center of Pangea,
it was believed to be a huge dessert with a swinging climate. The general rule
of thumb with climate is the farther away you get from the ocean or a large
body of water the more of a variation in temperature you get between seasons. The weather on Pangea would be brutal. Since
all the land mass of earth was on one side, storms would be super powered. Storms gain strength when they travel over
the ocean, so with storms traveling over oceans for half the earth, hurricanes would
make landfall and destroy everything in their path. Tornadoes would be ten
times more powerful from what we see today.
We don’t know much
about plate tectonics, but what we do know is that when plates rub together
they make earthquakes and volcanoes. With
all the continental plates so close together we can imagine that earthquakes
and volcanoes would be a weekly occurrence. Based on where the ring of fire
lies today (around the Pacific Ocean), this would be approximately around the outside of where Pangea was located. This could mean that volcanoes and
earthquakes would be much more frequent on Pangea than of what we see today. Alfred Wenger suggests that the continents were like puzzle pieces and that the plate tech tonics were constantly in motion this is what I got out of the video.
Bibliography
https://course.bighistoryproject.com/Part1/Unit04-EarthSolarSystem/U4-Main-YoungEarth/Main-Part2
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