What is Gondwana?

So...What exactly is Gondwana?

Gondwana, originally Gondwanaland, is the name given to a southern precursor-supercontinent. Its final joining occurred between ca. 570 and 510 million years ago, joining East Gondwana to West Gondwana, and it later separated from Laurasia 180-200 million years ago during the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent that existed about 500 to 200 million years ago into two large segments.

While the corresponding northern hemisphere continent Laurasia moved further north, the nearly equal in area Gondwana drifted south. It included most of the landmasses in today's southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia-New Guinea, and New Zealand, as well as Arabia and the Indian subcontinent, which have now moved into the Northern Hemisphere.

The continent of Gondwana was named by Eduard Suess after the Gondwana region of central northern India (from Sanskrit gondavana "forest of Gond"), from which the Gondwana sedimentary sequences (Permian-Triassic) are also described.

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