Advances in Conception about Earthquakes - Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design - page 107

Figure 4.5 Break-up of continental lithosphere (USGS, nd)
geologic crust together with plant and animal life, showing the similarities between
the Africa and Asia coasts, which were not considered as accidental coincidences.
Wegener was not the first to notice that the continental patterns fit together like
a jigsaw puzzle, but he was able to make this idea as a part of modern Earth
science. Wegener considered that, just like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the
world's continents could imaginably be fitted together to form, 225 million years
ago, one super-continent named Pangaea (from Greek, all land ) , surrounded by a
universal ocean, Panthalassa (from Greek, all sea ) (Fig. 4.6). But Pangaea was,
geologically speaking, a rather short-lived phenomenon. At the end of this period,
200 million years ago, some cracks began to occur in this super-continent. The first