Pangea moved due to convection currents within the Earth's mantle.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
The Earth's mantle, the layer beneath the crust, isn't solid rock but behaves more like a very thick fluid over long periods. Heat from the Earth's core causes convection currents to rise towards the surface. Think of it like boiling water in a pot: hot water rises, cools at the surface, and then sinks back down.
These convection currents exert a drag force on the tectonic plates, including the supercontinent Pangea, which sat on top of the mantle.
The Process:
- Mantle Convection: Uneven heat distribution within the Earth drives convection currents. Hotter, less dense material rises, while cooler, denser material sinks.
- Plate Interaction: These currents interact with the lithosphere (Earth's crust and uppermost mantle), causing the plates to move.
- Pangea's Breakup: The drag from these currents caused stresses that eventually broke Pangea apart around 200 million years ago into Laurasia and Gondwanaland. These landmasses then continued to drift to their present-day locations.
Therefore, the movement of Pangea, and the subsequent arrangement of continents we see today, is a result of the slow, but powerful, forces generated by mantle convection.
