Laurasia

Laurasia (lôrāzh`ə): see continental drift.

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Laurasia

Hypothetical former supercontinent in the Southern Hemisphere, which included modern North America, Europe, and Asia (except peninsular India). The concept that the continents were at one time joined was first set forth in detail by Alfred Wegener in 1912. He envisioned a single great landmass, Pangea, which supposedly began to separate early in the Jurassic Period (approximately 200 million to 146 million years ago). Subsequent research distinguished between a northern landmass, Laurasia, and Gondwana. Laurasia is thought to have fragmented into the present continents largely during the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the Paleogene Period. See also continental drift.

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Laurasia

one of the two ancient supercontinents produced by the first split of the even larger supercontinent Pangaea about 200 million years ago, comprising what are now North America, Greenland, Europe, and Asia (excluding India)

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Laurasia [lȯ′rā·zhə]

(geology)

A continent theorized to have existed in the Northern Hemisphere; supposedly it broke up to form the present northern continents about the end of the Pennsylvanian period.

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Laurasia 

(from “Laurentian Shield,” the former name of the Canadian Shield, and “Asia”), the ancient continent that included the North American, Eastern European, and Siberian platforms, and possibly the Chinese-Korean and South Chinese platforms as well as the Caledonian and Hercynian folded structures located between them. The unification of the North American and Eastern European platforms into a single land mass occurred at the beginning of the Devonian across the area now occupied by the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. The other parts of Laurasia became joined together by the end of the Paleozoic. The breakup of Laurasia and the formation of the basin of the North Atlantic began in the middle of the Mesozoic.