Do you believe that all the land in the world was once connected?

Question

I was looking at a world map and south america and africa are nearly identical in shape. Also, both land masses in the hemisphere look like they could fit right into each other like pieces of a puzzle. Do you think the water (ocean, rivers, floods, etc.) cause the land to split apart like the water that cut through the Grand Canyon? Or do you think that if the water between the two hemispheres was taken away, we might see how the entire land mass was connected?

Answer 1

The reason the continents look so similar in shape is becasue they were once connected. The super continent of Pangaea. The break up is believed to have happened at the end of the Permian. here is a link that might help

http://geology.com/pangea.htm

Answer 2

Yes, it was all connected as the single continent Pangaea.

It was Alfred Wegener who proposed "Continental Drift" about 90 years ago to explain the close match between the coastlines of South America and Africa. All the scientists just said yes, very interesting, but since there's no force great enough to move them, it's got to be only a coincidence.

Now we understand that radioactive heat in the Earth's metal core causes convection currents in the mantle and continental drift, and are pretty sure that Pangaea broke up into Laurasia and Gondwanaland, then these supercontinents broke up some more. There was one theory that when the core was smallest, the convection current just went up at one point and down at the opposite point, so Pangaea drifted until it was sitting over the descending current. Metal fragments in the mantle gravitationally settled down to the core, so it grew, and the convection pattern had to change, first into two rotating hemisperical shells and then into more and more smaller ones. Every change can start to break up a crustal plate or shove two plates together.

Answer 3

I believe that all the continents were at one time a giant land mass. Massive earthquakes the volcanoes caused the mass to split into many different plates. If you look at South America and Africa and use some imagination, they look like they could fit together like a puzzle.

Answer 4

All the plates were once connected and was one huge area of land known as a Pangaea and is believed to have seperated ard 180million yrs ago. They also believe that the Pangaea was a C shaped landmass. Note that it is all a theory. T H E O R Y. And the continents were not split apart by water. The land we are stepping on 'floats' on magma, and the magma moves, bring the whole continent with it. Its kinda like how the ice floats on water, except that the ice is not ripped apart. Please think along the lines of HUGE pieces of ice.

Answer 5

Some interesting answers.
Useful to realise that the earth's crust is like a sheet of paper wrapped round a football - very thin compared to the earth's diameter.
The forces that move continents / tectonic plates about are the convective flows in the semi-molten rock under that thin sheet of paper.
The oceans and rivers have almost no effect. They simply cause erosion of the mountains that tectonic plate movements throw up.

Answer 6

It's not a matter of belief. There is a large body of scientific evidence that shows that almost all of Earth's land mass was in one giant super-continent, known to the geologic community as Pangaea.
The movement of tectonic plates beneath the Earth's outer surface caused Pangaea to split up many millions of years ago.

Answer 7

It's called "Pangea" - look it up. Scientists have found similar species of plants and animals on the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa - coincidence? Did you also know that the continents are slowing moving apart from each other at the rate of about 3cm a year? That implies that a LONG time ago, they were all connected.

Answer 8

Due to continental drift Pangaea was formed about the Early Triassic 237 million years ago. But not to forget the super-continent that pre-dated Pangaea. Around 750 million years ago in the Proterozoic, The super-continent Rodinia split apart before grouping together again to form Pangaea. Rodinia existed from around 1.1 billion years - 750 million years ago

Answer 9

Wow! I never thought of it until now...but I do believe that the world was connected and much of the land was flooded by water. I went to the Grand Canyon this summer and it's amazing how water could create such a natural HUGE beauty!

Answer 10

It wasn't a jigsaw puzzle.... The plates were fused. A continent was formed called Pangea.

The continents have changed shapes or have got drowned in seas and oceans from back then.

It was years and years and years ago.