| 释义 |
Pangæa Geol.|pænˈdʒiːə|
[f. pan- + Gr. γαῖα land, earth.
The name is freq. stated to have been coined by A. Wegener 1914, in Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, but it has not been found in the 1st ed. of that book (actually published in 1915); Pangäa does occur in ed. 2 (1920), p. 120, but with no indication that Wegener is coining it.]
A vast continental area or supercontinent comprising all the continental crust of the earth which is postulated to have existed in late Palæozoic or Mesozoic times before breaking up into Gondwanaland and Laurasia.
1924J. G. A. Skerl tr. Wegener's Orig. Continents & Oceans xiii. 192 Thus the Pangæa of the Carboniferous era had already an anterior margin (America), which became folded (Precordilleras)..; and a posterior margin (Asia), from which littoral ranges and fragments became detached, and remained fast in the sima of the Pacific as groups of islands. 1928C. Schuchert in Theory Continental Drift (Amer. Assoc. Petroleum Geol.) 106 The rifting of Pangaea and the floating away of Australasia, Antarctica, and the Americas are said to have begun east of Africa in Jurassic time and west of Euro-Africa in early Cretaceous time. 1958Continental Drift (Tasmania Univ. Geol. Dept.) 177 Apart from the dissociation of Pangaea into independent Laurasia and Gondwana, the fundamental picture is much as Wegener saw it. 1971I. G. Gass et al. Understanding Earth xv. 230/2 Before the Pangaea of Permo-Triassic time was formed, one must envisage a different mosaic of continental fragments reassembled in a different way. 1974Sci. Amer. Apr. 81/1 Ancient ocean currents in the vicinity of Pangaea, the single ‘supercontinent’ that is believed to have existed near the beginning of the Triassic period some 225 million years ago, are indicated here. 1977Ibid. Mar. 92/3 About 600 million or perhaps one billion years ago the ancestors of all the present continents were evidently combined into one immense supercontinent, named Pangaea, which may have come into existence as much as 2.7 billion years ago. |