Gondwana
proper noun

- the Mesozoic landmass in the Southern Hemisphere that included what are now South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica

- an ancient supercontinent that incorporated present-day South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica.

Collins Dictionary, Britannica

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WORD ORIGIN

"Gondwana" derives from the Sanskrit Gondavana, which means "forest of the Gonds." The Gond people are one of the largest tribal groups in India, primarily residing in what is now Madhya Pradesh and its surrounding regions.

The term was first used in a geological context by Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist, in the late 19th century. Suess adopted the name from the Gondwana region in central India. Suess used "Gondwana-Land" to describe what he theorized was a large ancient landmass that included present-day India, Madagascar, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. He based this on similar geological formations and fossil evidence across these now-separated regions.

The name was particularly appropriate because the Gondwana region in India contains important coal-bearing geological formations (the Gondwana beds) that shared similarities with formations found in other southern continents.

As the theory of continental drift and later plate tectonics developed in the 20th century, the concept of Gondwana was refined and confirmed as a supercontinent that existed from approximately 550 million years ago until its breakup began about 180 million years ago.

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EARTHLY INSIGHTS

- “Geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied." — Stephen Jay Gould

- "Rocks Don’t Lie. They Just Wait." — Anonymous

- “The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone.” — John McPhee, Annals of the Former World

- "We learn geology the morning after the earthquake." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

- "Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really... pressure and time." — adapted from "The Shawshank Redemption"

- "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded." — Terry Pratchett (humorously describing the beginning of Earth)

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SYNONYMS

ancient earth, ancestral continent, continental ancestor, early earth, fossil past, geologic rift, GONDWANA, old earth, primal continent, primal earth, primordial continent, proto-earth, ur-earth, ur-land, vanished continent, world before words

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