Gondwana




 
  Quotes : Gondwana

Folia Primatologica
2006
page Vol 77: 6
Africa, India and Madagascar were once part of the supercontinent of Gondwana. This land mass began to fragment approx. 170 million years ago, and by 83 million years, all of the major components we recognize today were separated by tracts of water. Madagascar's fossil record and estimates of the timing of the extant vertebrate radiations in Madagascar are not easily reconciled with this history of fragmentation. Fossil faunas that lived prior to approx. 65 million years had a cosmopolitan flavour, but this was lost after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary [J.C. Masters, M.J. de Wit, R.J. Asher]

Scientific American
2002/02
286
page 56
number 2
Flynn, John J.
At the dawn of the Mesozoic era 250 million years ago, it would have been possible to walk from Madagascar to almost anywhere else in the world. All of the planet's land masses were united in the supercontinent Pangea, and Madagascar was nestled between the west coast of what is now India and the east coast of present-day Africa [...]. The world was a good deal warmer than at present--even the poles were free of ice. In the supercontinent's southern region, called Gondwana, enormous rivers coursed into lowland basins that would eventually become the Mozambique Channel, which today spans the 250 miles between Madagascar and eastern Africa.