50 free Pangaea trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Pangaea trivia quiz covers the last supercontinent, the C-shaped landmass that held nearly all of Earth's dry land together from about 335 to 175 million years ago. The easier questions handle what most people remember from school: what the name means, the German scientist who proposed continental drift, the two halves called Gondwana and Laurasia, the superocean around it and the way South America and Africa fit together like puzzle pieces. The harder end is for geology fans: the 16th-century mapmaker who first noticed the fit, the reptile whose fossils turn up only in Brazil and West Africa, the seed fern that stitched Gondwana together, the Central Pangean Mountains that once rivalled the Himalayas, the mantle-convection idea of Arthur Holmes, the magnetic stripes and ocean-floor maps that finally convinced geologists in the 1960s, the Great Dying and the flood basalts that accompanied the breakup, and the earlier supercontinents Rodinia and Columbia. There are also questions on Wegener's death in Greenland and the future supercontinents geologists have sketched. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Pangaea, plate tectonics, the scientists involved and the fossils and oceans concerned before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our geology, volcanoes, dinosaurs and Earth science quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Pangaea comes from ancient words meaning what?
All earth
It combines pan, 'all, entire', with Gaia, the Earth or Mother Earth.
Q 02Which German scientist put forward the continental drift hypothesis in 1912?
Alfred Wegener
He was primarily a meteorologist and polar researcher; mainstream geology did not accept his idea until the 1960s.
Q 03Wegener's 1915 book expanding the theory was titled, in English, what?
The Origin of Continents and Oceans
In it he called the single landmass the Urkontinent; the name Pangaea appears just once in the 1920 edition.
Q 04Pangaea finished assembling from Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during which geological period?
Carboniferous
That was about 335 million years ago; it began to break apart around 200 million years ago at the end of the Triassic.
Q 05What letter shape did Pangaea resemble?
C
The Tethys Ocean sat inside the curve, and a single vast superocean surrounded the rest.
Q 06What was the name of the vast superocean that surrounded Pangaea?
Panthalassa
Its name means 'all sea'; at about 250 million years ago it covered almost 70% of Earth's surface.
Q 07The northern of Pangaea's two great landmasses was called what?
Laurasia
The name is a portmanteau of Laurentia and Eurasia; it split from the southern mass when the supercontinent broke up.
Q 08Which Austrian geologist named Gondwana after a region of India?
Eduard Suess
The Sanskrit root means 'forest of the Gonds'; some prefer 'Gondwanaland' to keep the continent distinct from the region.
Q 09Roughly what fraction of today's continental area consists of former pieces of Gondwana?
About two-thirds
Its remnants include South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Zealandia, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent.
Q 10The Tethys Ocean, inside the supercontinent's curve, preceded which modern sea?
The Mediterranean
It also gave rise to the Indian Ocean, while the Black and Caspian Seas are remnants of the later Paratethys.
Q 11The Tethys Ocean is named after a figure from which mythology?
Greek
Tethys was a water goddess, sister and consort of Oceanus and mother of the Oceanid sea nymphs.
Q 12Who may have first suggested, in 1596, that the continents were once joined and torn apart?
Abraham Ortelius
In his Thesaurus Geographicus he wrote that the Americas were 'torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and floods'.
Q 13Antonio Snider-Pellegrini's 1858 maps of the continents fitted together attributed their separation to what?
The Biblical Flood
He also proposed that the Earth changed size dramatically at the time of Noah.
Q 21Which South African geologist's 1937 book Our Wandering Continents proposed two original supercontinents?
Alexander du Toit
He had crossed the Atlantic specifically to test his predictions that the geology of South America matched South Africa.
Q 22Matching glacial deposits on separate continents point to a late Paleozoic ice cap over which part of Pangaea?
Its southern end
Gondwana sat near the South Pole, and glaciers formed in Antarctica, India, Australia, southern Africa and South America.
Q 23What was the climate like in Pangaea's vast interior?
Dry with extreme heat and cold
Q 14Wegener originally proposed what as the mechanism driving continents apart?
Centrifugal force from Earth's rotation
The mechanism was implausible; a British geologist later proposed mantle convection, which fitted far better.
Q 15Which English geologist proposed in 1931 that convection cells in the mantle move the crust?
Arthur Holmes
He championed drift when it was deeply unfashionable and gave it a chapter in his bestselling Principles of Physical Geology.
Q 16The Appalachians and which European range are thought to have formed one chain across Pangaea?
The Scandinavian Caledonides
Together they were the Central Pangean Mountains, which the Variscan orogeny raised to Himalayan scale.
Q 17At their peak 295 million years ago, the Central Pangaean Mountains rivalled which range?
The Himalayas
They had largely eroded away by the Middle Triassic, long before the supercontinent split.
Q 18Fossils of the freshwater reptile Mesosaurus are found only in Brazil and which other region?
West Africa
A small aquatic reptile could not have crossed an ocean, so the split distribution is classic evidence for the joined continents.
Q 19Glossopteris, whose fossils helped tie Gondwana together, was what kind of plant?
A seed fern
Its tongue-shaped leaves give it its name; the forests died out in the end-Permian extinction.
Q 20Lystrosaurus, found from South Africa to Antarctica, is notable for what?
Surviving and thriving after the Great Dying
The pig-sized herbivore had just two tusk-like teeth and a horny beak; its fossils dominate Early Triassic beds worldwide.
Far from the sea, it probably formed one of the most extensive desert systems in Earth's history.
Q 24The Permian–Triassic 'Great Dying' wiped out roughly what share of marine species?
81%
It also killed about 70% of land vertebrate species; the Siberian Traps eruptions are the accepted main cause.
Q 25Which mass extinction is linked to the Central Atlantic magmatic province, erupted about 201 million years ago?
Triassic–Jurassic
Covering about 11 million square kilometres, it is Earth's largest continental large igneous province.
Q 26Where did the first rifting of Pangaea begin?
The north-central Atlantic
Rifting then ran along eastern North America and northwest Africa; the South Atlantic did not open until the Cretaceous.
Q 27After separating from Madagascar, India moved north toward Eurasia at what plate-tectonic record speed?
About 15 cm per year
Its collision closed the eastern Tethys and raised the world's highest mountains; Australia and India now move northeast at 5 to 6 cm a year.
Q 28Where does the break-up of Pangaea continue today?
The Red Sea and East African Rifts
Australia is meanwhile on a collision course with eastern Asia.
Q 29Which supercontinent existed from about 1.3 billion to 750 million years ago, before Pannotia?
Rodinia
Its name comes from the Russian for 'motherland'; its breakup may have triggered the Snowball Earth glaciations.
Q 30The supercontinent Columbia, assembled around 2.0 to 1.8 billion years ago, is also known by what name?
Nuna
It was first proposed in 2002 by John Rogers and M. Santosh and is sometimes called Hudsonland.