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Pangea, also spelled Pangaea,in early geological time, a super continent that incorporated almost all the landmasses on Earth Pangea was surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa, and it was fully assembled by the Early Permian Epoch, some 299 million to 273 million years ago. The super continent began to break apart about 200 million years ago, during the Early Jurassic Epoch, eventually forming the modern continents and the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Pangeas existence was first proposed in 1912 by German meteorologist Alfred Wegener as a part of his theory of continental drift. Its name is derived from the Greek pangaia, meaning all the Earth. During the early Permian, the north western coastline of the ancient continent Gondwana, a paleocontinent that would eventually fragment to become South America,India, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, collided with and joined the southern part of Euramerica, a paleo continent made up of North America and southern Europe. with the fusion of the Angaran craton of Siberia to that combined landmass during the middle of the Early Permian, the assembly of Pangea was complete. Cathaysia, a landmass comprising the former tectonic plates of North and South China, was not incorporated into Pangea. Rather, it formed a separate, much smaller, continent within the global ocean Panthalassa. The mechanism for thr breakup of Pangea is now explained in terms of plate tectonics rather than Wegeners outmoded concept of continental drift, which simply stated that Earths continents were once joined together into the supercontinent Pangea that lasted for most ooof geolocal time. Plate tectonics states that Earths outer shell, or lithosphere,consists of large rigid plates that move apart at oceanic ridges, come together at subduction zones, or slip past one another along fault lines. The pattern of seafloor spreading indicates that pPangea did not not break apart all at once but rather fragmented in distinct stages. Plate tectonics also postulates that the continents joined with one another and broke apart several times in Earths geological history. the first oceans formed from the breakup, some 180 million years ago,were the central Atlantic Ocean between north western Africa and North America and the south western Indian Ocean between Africa and Antarctica. The South Atlantic Ocean opened about 140 million years ago as Africa separated from South America. About the same time, India separated from Antarctica and Australia, forming the central Indian Ocean. Finally, about 80 million years ago, North America separated from Europe. Australia began to rift away from Antarctica, and Indian broke away from Madagascar. India eventually collided with Eurasia approximately 50 million years ago, forming the Himalayas. During Earths long history, there probably have been several Pangea like supercontinents. The oldest of those supercontinents is called Rodinia.