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	Pangaea in the Early Triassic      Globe showing Pangaea in the Early Triassic (map: Athena Review).
	In the Early Triassic period (252-247 mya), all continental plates were joined into the megacontinent named Pangaea except China, Indonesia, and Thailand. The northern area was called Laurasia, and the southern area Gondwanaland.  The latter name was coined by the geologist Eduard Suess in the 1860s, based on the widespread Permian distribution of Glossopteris, fern-like trees first observed in Gondwana province in India. Based on its distribution in now separate continents, Suess perceived the occurrence of continental drift, which was later confirmed by Alfred Wegener in the 1920s. Laurasia was named for a juncture of Eurasia and the area of the St. Lawrence River in North America. The joining of the continents into Pangaea had occurred by the prior, Permian period (298-252 mya). The continents later started to split apart again by the Late Triassic and Jurassic periods.                                                                         References: .
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