Earth’s got a lot on its plate

QUESTION Who named the original supercontinents of Pangea and Gondwanaland?

The geological theory of plate tectonics seeks to explain how the continents came about.

It’s believed that a supercontinent called Pangea ( or Pangaea) formed 270 million years ago, before splitting into Gondwanaland ( which later became Antarctica, India, Australia, South America and Africa) and Laurasia ( North America, europe and Asia).

The earth’s surface is seen as a series of plates that have been moving away and towards each other for thousands of years.

Gondwana was coined in 1872 by henry Medlicott for sedimentary rocks in central India, in the ancient kingdom of the Gonds.

Pangea is derived from the Ancient Greek pan, meaning ‘all, entire, whole’, and Gaia, ‘Mother earth, land’.

This name was coined by the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener. he developed the earlier theory of continental drift in 1912, which saw the earth’s surface developing from the great supercontinent, the Urkontinent.

It was superseded by plate tectonics in the Sixties.

Peter Smith, Durham.

QUESTION Is it true hundreds of soldiers were killed in a rehearsal for D-Day?

FUrTher to earlier answers, I, too, met Ken Small on Slapton Sands selling The Forgotten Dead, the story of exercise Tiger.

I didn’t understand why he was so keen to listen to his car radio until he said: ‘haven’t you heard?’ It was September 11, 2001.