Re: Prior to Gondwana?

[jimf@vangelis.ncrmicro.ncr.com (Jim Foley)]

>>>>> On Tue, 23 May 1995 13:36:08 -0400, Skip Dahlgren
>>>>> <SDAHLGREN@liblan.uams.edu> said:

>> All sources that I have been able to find refer to no earlier land 
>> configuration than the unified supercontinent Gondwana.  Yet it seems 
>> reasonable to assume that there must have been movement prior to Gondwana.  
>> This huge cluster must have been the result of earlier continental movements 
>> and collisions.  

Wasn't the single supercontinent Pangaea?  Gondwana and Laurasia were
the two continents it split into.

>> Is there simply no popular interest in the configuration of these earlier 
>> continents, has the matter not been studied, or is it too difficult to 
>> project continental movements back in time prior to the Gondwana 
>> supercontinent?

There was an article in Scientific American a few years ago about it.  I
believe the authors thought that there had been a previous
supercontinent about 500 my ago, but I don't remember if they tried to
go further back.  I can look this up tonight.

-- 
Jim Foley                             Symbios Logic, Fort Collins
Jim.Foley@symbios.com                        (303) 223-5100 x9765
The clinching proof of my reasoning is that I will cut anyone who argues
further into dogmeat.       -- Sir Geoffery de Tourneville, ca 1350 A.D.