What evidence is there for the existence of Pangea?

Answer

When Alfred Wegener developed the theory of continental drift in the early 20th century, he mainly relied on geological evidence he found on the continents. In addition, he had an important tool for piecing together Pangea (meaning “all land”): the Atlantic coasts of South America and Africa fit together perfectly. And if you did, a striking number of elements on both sides of the Atlantic matched: the 600-million-year-old glacial deposits, the distribution of the fossils, ancient mountain ranges, etc. He compared this evidence to a torn newspaper: Suppose that you have several pieces of a torn newspaper, and I ask you to put the front page back together, what are you going to do? First you will try to find pieces that fit together; and if then the text on the fitted pieces belongs together, then you are sure that both pieces belonged to the same sheet. And that is exactly what Wegener did with the continents when he puzzled Pangea.
But today we know more. The oceans have released their secrets. We now know that the continents drift apart because they are on a ‘conveyor belt’. And on that conveyor we find a kind of ‘bar code’ that allows us to go back in time. On the attached figure you will find that barcode as colors that represent the age of the ocean crust. You see that you can slide everything together in the opposite direction. And eventually you end up where Wegener already came out about 100 years ago: Pangea.
Of course we can no longer do this exercise to find out what happened before Pangea. But don’t worry: around the world that is older than 200 million years, geologists have a whole range of instruments. In this way we can reconstruct world history deep into Earth’s history, billions of years ago.