supercontinent question?

Question

So there were at least 2 supercontinents?
Were there more than 2?
Rodinia spread apart?
How did they combine to become Pangaea?

Answer 1

Yes, there were actually more than 2 supercontinents, for example:
Rodinia
Gondwana
Pangea

Rodinia spread apart in the Late Proterozoic also called the Pre-Cambrian.

Pangea began assembling in the late Devonian and was fully assembled by the early Permian. It was assembled as Eurasia and Gondwana continents moved together, along with a few other much smaller parts of continental crust.

To view paleomaps and virtual animations of plate tectonic motions for much of Earth's history visit this website:
http://www.scotese.com/Default.htm

Another set of excellent paleomaps are at:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/globaltext2.html

Edit: The term 'supercontinent' is not a term left to be defined by the uniformed user of the word, as one answerer here believes. It is in fact a scientifically defined term and the term supercontinent is not in debate. There may be some debate about some supercontinents, but the term is not open to interpretation.

Answer 2

Most commonly, paleogeographers employ the term supercontinent to refer to a single landmass consisting of all the modern continents. The earliest known supercontinent was Vaalbara. It formed from proto-continents and was a supercontinent by 3.1 billion years ago (3.1 Ga). Vaalbara broke up ~2.8 Ga. The supercontinent Kenorland was formed ~2.7 Ga and then broke sometime after 2.5 Ga into the proto-continent cratons called Laurentia, Baltica, Australia, and Kalahari. The supercontinent Columbia formed and broke up during a period of 1.8 to 1.5 billion years (1.8-1.5 Ga) ago.

The supercontinent Rodinia broke up roughly 750 million years ago. One of the fragments included large parts of the continents now located in the southern hemisphere. Plate tectonics brought the fragments of Rodinia back together in a different configuration during the late Paleozoic era, forming the best-known supercontinent, Pangaea. Pangaea subsequently broke up into the northern and southern supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana.

Modern studies have suggested that supercontinents form in cycles, coming together and breaking apart again through plate tectonics, very roughly about every 250 million years.

Please see Wikipedia for more information.
Search for "Supercontinent".

Answer 3

I could answer this question for you directly, but that would be less fun. You can see how the continental plates moved through time at:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/mollglobe.html
You will note that the number of supercontinents depends partly on how you define supercontinent [see the answer by Carbonates above], but in general I think you could say that there were two. When did these two supercontinents exist? What happened before 0.6 to 1 billion years ago and the timetable is debateable in detail but overall it is reasonably well understood.

Mechanisms that drive plate tectonics can be seen in a succinct article at http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tecmech.html

Wikipedia has a very fine article on plate tectonics at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics
This is very good for detailing the different theories on mechanisms of plate tectonics.

A very fine lesson on plate tectonics is at http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/plate_tectonics/introduction.html
If you compare the animation given in the first section above with one of the maps you will come to in this lesson plan, you will see that there were 2 supercontinents over the billion or so years. Different sources give different times for he breakup of Rodinia, which is not surprising given how long ago it was.

See also maps at http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/historical.html
and their parent page at
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/preface.html

As for Rodinia, you can read about this supercontinent specifically at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodinia
You can compare this article to the one at http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/cambtect.html
that is under the home page of
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/anim1.html

I hope this helps you. Fascinating subject!

Cheers!

Grinx

Answer 4

It would form in a different way due to continental drift and the changing shape of coastlines that would occur during the 200 - 250 million year time frame

Answer 5

plate tectonics