510 Million B.C.T. - The Supercontinent Gondwana Formed

It is believed that, around 510 million years ago, land masses, including North America and what is now Siberia, were laid along the equator.  Below the equator, South America, India, Australia, Antarctica, and Africa were all melded into a single supercontinent, Gondwana.

Throughout geological history, the continents have moved and fragmented as new oceans opened, and coalesced with other continents as old oceans closed.  It is not precisely known how the continents were distributed in the earliest Precambrian era.  However, around 510 million years ago, the large continent -- the supercontinent -- known as Gondwana was situated over the southern polar region while smaller areas of land existed around the equator and in the Northern Hemisphere.

In paleogeography, Gondwana, originally Gondwanaland, was the southernmost of two supercontinents (the other being Laurasia) that were part of the Pangaea supercontinent. It existed from approximately 510 to 180 million years ago (Mya). Gondwana is believed to have sutured between 570 and 510 Mya, thus joining East Gondwana to West Gondwana. It separated from Laurasia 200-180 Mya (the mid Mesozoic era) during the breakup of Pangaea, drifting further south after the split.

Gondwana included most of the landmasses in today's Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar and the Australian continent, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, which have now moved entirely into the Northern Hemisphere.
The continent of Gondwana was named by Austrian scientist, Eduard Suess, after the Gondwana region of central northern India (from Sanskrit gondavana -- "forest of the Gonds"), from which the Gondwana sedimentary sequences (Permian-Triassic) are also described.

The adjective Gondwanan is in common use in biogeography when referring to patterns of distribution of living organisms, typically when the organisms are restricted to two or more of the now-discontinuous regions that were once part of Gondwana, including the Antarctic flora. For example, the Proteaceae, a family of plants known only from southern South America, South Africa and Australia, are considered to have a "Gondwanan distribution". This pattern is often considered to indicate an archaic, or relict, lineage.