--- title: Moving continents: from Pangaea to today — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Moving continents: from Pangaea to today», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Then Pangaea tore apart, first into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south, and the pieces drifted to where they are n --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Moving continents: from Pangaea to today # Moving continents: from Pangaea to today Lesson 43 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/1/) — Then Pangaea tore apart, first into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south, and the pieces drifted to where they are now, a few centimetres a year. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/2/) — Look at a world map on your bedroom wall and slide South America over to Africa: the bulge of Brazil tucks into the curve of West Africa like two jigsaw pieces. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/3/) — The same fossil reptiles turn up on continents now oceans apart, and Britain has coal from tropical swamps and Antarctica has fossil forests, because those lands once lay somewhere else. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/4/) — The film keeps playing: the Atlantic is still widening, Africa is creeping into Europe, and in a couple of hundred million years the continents will probably meet again, though scientists argue about the shape. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/5/) — About 300-200 million years ago almost all land was joined in one supercontinent called Pangaea. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/6/) — Pangaea was surrounded by one giant ocean called Panthalassa. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/7/) — Dinosaurs lived on Pangaea, but humans appeared only a few hundred thousand years ago, long after it split. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/8/) — Pangaea began to break up about 200 million years ago, first into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/9/) — The coasts of South America and Africa fit together like jigsaw pieces, and the fit is even better along the edges of the continental shelves under the sea, because today's beaches have been worn away and flooded by the sea. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/10/) — Fossils of the same reptiles, Mesosaurus and Lystrosaurus, are found on continents now separated by oceans that these animals could never have crossed. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/11/) — The Atlantic Ocean is a young ocean that started opening about 180 million years ago and is still widening. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/12/) — India broke away from Gondwana and raced north at up to about 15 cm a year (today it moves about 5 cm a year), hitting Asia about 50 million years ago and pushing up the Himalayas. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/13/) — Pangaea was not the first supercontinent: earlier ones such as Rodinia, about 1 billion years ago, came together and split too. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/14/) — Scientists predict the continents will join again in about 200-250 million years, though they argue about the exact shape. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/15/) — Africa is pushing slowly north into Europe, squeezing the Mediterranean, which may close in tens of millions of years. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/43-moving-continents-from-pangaea-to-today/16/) — Moving continents changed climates: Antarctica once had forests, and coal is found under Britain, which lay near the equator about 300 million years ago. - ← previous: [Plate tectonics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/42-plate-tectonics/) - next →: [Earthquakes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/44-earthquakes/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)