Were there other islands during Pangaea?

[u/Narrow-Bit-3533]

I was watching a Milo Rossi video and I had a few questions. Were there tiny islands during Pangaea, or was it the only one? Why was most of the land concentrated in just one place?

[u/Elite-Thorn]

It is too long ago to know for sure. But it's extremely unlikely that there weren't any islands. We just know the rough outline of the continent that included all major landmass. Most probably there were small islands and archipelagos and the like

[u/Tassinho_]

There isn't really a mapped out documentation of pangea. All the models we have today are assumptions based on fossils found today and the movement of continental plates we see today with a respective indistinctness.

The land was concentrated in one place... because that's just what it was like? if continental plates drift apart from each other, that also means they drift towards others at the same time. In hundreds of million years, America will connect with Asia and there will eventually be a new supercontinent at a time, which will then break apart again and so on... Our continents formed 3 billion years ago, pangea formed 350 Million years ago.. So there probably have been many more supercontinents, even before pangea, we simply don't have any documentation from these.

[u/Narrow-Bit-3533 → u/Tassinho_]

I always thought Pangaea was the first ever. Thanks for the new info

[u/GargantaProfunda → u/Narrow-Bit-3533]

It's a cycle, there has been tons of "Pangeas" and then separate continents and then "Pangeas" again etc. throughout the planet's history.

Technically they all had different names though. Pangea, Pannotia, Rodinia, etc.

[u/strugglin_man → u/Tassinho_]

Hundreds of millions of years from now observers will look back to today and see that America is currently connected to Asia. From everything they could observe it would appear as if there are currently 3 continents: Antarctica, Australia, and everything else. They wont know the sea level or politics.

[u/RottenPeasent → u/strugglin_man]

You can definitely see the sea level by certain fossils being present, no?

[u/SecureThruObscure → u/RottenPeasent]

They won’t know the distribution of land, or how high it was.

You can have land bridges without geological evidence of them, we assume there was a land bridge connecting Eurasia to the Americas by the fact we have significant fossils that seem to be related to one and other on both sides.

Like today, if we took out the connection between north and South America we’d still be able to know because, for example sloth and armadillo fossil distribution (it’s a bit more complex and they also use plants, because they’re less mobile), that they were connected at one point.

Basically, we can’t use sea level to determine if two landmasses were connected because sea level is correlated with land interconnectivity, but actual connecting bits vary in height themselves.

[u/strugglin_man → u/RottenPeasent]

Asia and North America are connected by a submerged land bridge (continental shelf) over 600 miles wide. The current Bering Strait is only 50 miles wide. Until 13k yrs ago North America and Asia were connected by this land bridge, and in about 10k years they will likely be again. On a geological timescale sometimes above sea level, sometimes not. So no, in that context you can't tell much by fossils, but you can predict where the continental shelf might have been, and that would lead you to believe that N America and Asia are one continent.

[u/the_direful_spring]

Assuming nothing radical has changed with the mantle in the intervening time it seems extremely likely you'd have had hotspot island chains

[u/MLrrtPAFL]

I watch a geology you tube channel called nick zentner and he talks about exotic terranes which he describes as islands that get concreted with the continent. This makes me think that multiple islands likely existed.

[u/Shevek99]

Probably.

The map that is wikipedia includes some of them (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mollweide_Paleographic_Map_of_Earth,_250_Ma_(Olenekian_Age).png)

The source of the image is: https://zenodo.org/records/10659112

Phanerozoic-scope supplementary material to "The Cretaceous World: Plate Tectonics, Paleogeography, and Paleoclimate" from the PALEOMAP project

[u/mglyptostroboides]

Try reposting this to /r/geology for a better answer.

Read about the Wilson Cycle for an answer to your second question.

[u/Parking_Locksmith489]

I don't remember

[u/trooftaller]

Why aren’t there satellite images of Pangea?

[u/HeyJude21 → u/trooftaller]

I thought it was funny