Pangaea began to break up about 200 million years ago, around the boundary between the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods, and the process continued for tens of millions of years afterward.

Timing in geologic history

  • Pangaea existed as a unified supercontinent during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras.
  • It was fully assembled by roughly 299ā€“273 million years ago and started to rift apart around 200 million years ago, near the Triassicā€“Jurassic transition.

How the breakup unfolded

  • The initial breakup involved rifting that separated Pangaea into a northern landmass (Laurasia) and a southern landmass (Gondwana) during the Early Jurassic.
  • Later phases included the opening of the central Atlantic and then the further splitting of Gondwana into Africa, South America, India, Antarctica, and Australia over the next 150+ million years.

Why ā€œwhen did it start?ā€ isnā€™t a single moment

  • Continental breakup is a gradual tectonic process, so ā€œstart to break upā€ refers to when large-scale rifting first became geologically significant, not a sharp instant in time.
  • Many geologists therefore quote ā€œabout 200 million years agoā€ as the practical start date, even though the full dispersal of continents took much longer.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.