Pangaea

Pangaea or Pangea (/pænˈdʒiːə/) was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from earlier continental units approximately 300 million years ago, and it began to break apart about 175 million years ago. In contrast to the present Earth and its distribution of continental mass, much of Pangaea was in the southern hemisphere and surrounded by a super ocean, Panthalassa. Pangaea was the last supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.

Origin of the concept

The name is derived from Ancient Greek pan (πᾶν, "all, entire, whole") and Gaia (Γαῖα, "Mother Earth, land"). The concept was first proposed by Alfred Wegener, the originator of the theory of continental drift, in his 1912 publication The Origin of Continents (Die Entstehung der Kontinente). He expanded this hypothesis into his theory in his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane), first published in 1915, in which he postulated that (before breaking up and drifting to their present locations) all the continents had formed a single supercontinent that he called the "Urkontinent". The name first occurs in the 1920 edition of Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, but only once, when Wegener refers to the ancient supercontinent as "the Pangaea of the Carboniferous". Wegener used the Germanized form "Pangäa", but the term entered German and English scientific literature (in 1922 and 1926, respectively) in the Latinized form "Pangaea" (of the Greek "Pangaia"), especially due to a symposium of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in November 1926.

Savage Land

The Savage Land is a hidden fictional prehistoric land appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. It is a tropical preserve hidden in Antarctica. Throughout time it has served as a basis for many story arcs in Uncanny X-Men as well as in related books.

Publication history

The Savage Land first appeared in X-Men #10 (March 19650) and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Fictional history

The Savage Land was created by the alien Nuwali at the behest of the other-dimensional, nigh-omnipotent aliens known as the Beyonders (not to be confused with the Beyonder of the Secret Wars). The Beyonders sought to observe the process of evolution under relatively controlled conditions and had the Nuwali set up a number of game preserves on several planets. One of these planets was Earth during the Triassic period where the Nuwali chose a valley in Antarctica surrounded by active volcanoes, where they installed a number of advanced technological devices in order to maintain a tropical climate. The aliens then stocked the area with all manner of Earth life over the following several millennia. They also brought over the Man-Apes, earlier hominid ancestors of "Homo sapiens."

Pangaea (disambiguation)

Pangaea was a supercontinent of ancient Earth.

Pangaea or Pangea may also refer to: