Where did the name Gondwanaland come from?

Question

It was part of Pangaea. (supercontinent.)

HELP ME PLEASE

Answer 1

I just read about this the other night in a book I bought just for fun in a National Park bookstore. Here's a quoted passage that answers your question, and adds some more details:

"The idea of the continents moving around ... was mentioned as early as 1587 ... In 1620, Francis Bacon also mentioned the idea, noting the fit of the coastlines on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. By the 1880s, many other scientists were mentioning the connection.

"But it was the German scientist Alfred Wegener who first formally published the idea of continental displacement (or drift) ... He believed the continents were once joined together into one supercontinent, a place he named Pangaea that was surrounded by a superocean called Panthalassa. He also suggested that the massive continent divided about 200 million years ago, with Laurasia moving to the north and "

I'd add that as I recall, the ocean separating Laurasia and Gondwanaland was called Tethys. Today's Mediterranean might be a relic of that. The Mediterrranean, I think, is shrinking.

And although the origins of "Gondwanaland" and "Pangaea" appear to be here, it's not clear that Wegener made up the name "Laurasia."

Answer 2

Gondwanaland at the beginning of the Paleozoic and Pangea at the boundary of the Mesozoic