The remnants of Gondwana make up around two-thirds of today's continental area, including South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Zealandia, Arabia, and the Indian subcontinent.

Gondwana was formed by the accretion of several cratons (large stable blocks of the Earth's crust), beginning c. 800 to 650 Ma with the East African Orogeny, the collision of India and Madagascar with East Africa, and culminating in c. 600 to 530 Ma with the overlapping Brasiliano and Kuunga orogenies, the collision of South America with Africa, and the addition of Australia and Antarctica, respectively.

[2] Eventually, Gondwana became the largest piece of continental crust of the Paleozoic Era, covering an area of some 100,000,000 km2 (39,000,000 sq mi),[3] about one-fifth of the Earth's surface.

The final stages of break-up, involving the separation of Antarctica from South America (forming the Drake Passage) and Australia, occurred during the Paleogene (from around 66 to 23 million years ago (Ma)).

Laurentia was docked against the western shores of a united Gondwana for a brief period near the Precambrian and Cambrian boundary, forming the short-lived and still disputed supercontinent Pannotia.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the newly forming Africa, Kalahari collided with Congo and Rio de la Plata which closed the Adamastor Ocean.

Precambrian rocks from the Iberian Peninsula suggest that it, too, formed part of core Gondwana before its detachment as an orocline in the Variscan orogeny close to the Carboniferous–Permian boundary.

Subduction-related igneous rocks from beneath the North Patagonian Massif have been dated at 320–330 million years old, indicating that the subduction process initiated in the early Carboniferous.

[28] This was relatively short-lived (lasting about 20 million years), and initial contact of the two landmasses occurred in the mid-Carboniferous,[28][29] with broader collision during the early Permian.

The Cimmerian blocks then rifted from Gondwana to form the Paleo-Tethys and Neo-Tethys oceans in the Late Carboniferous, and docked with Asia during the Triassic and Jurassic.

[36] The reformed Gondwanan continent was not precisely the same as that which had existed before Pangaea formed; for example, most of Florida and southern Georgia and Alabama is underlain by rocks that were originally part of Gondwana, but this region stayed attached to North America when the Central Atlantic opened.

Before the Karoo plume initiated rifting between Africa and Antarctica, it separated a series of smaller continental blocks from Gondwana's southern, Proto-Pacific margin (along what is now the Transantarctic Mountains): the Antarctic Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land, Zealandia, and Thurston Island; the Falkland Islands and Ellsworth–Whitmore Mountains (in Antarctica) were rotated 90° in opposite directions; and South America south of the Gastre Fault (often referred to as Patagonia) was pushed westward.

[39] The history of the Africa-Antarctica break-up can be studied in great detail in the fracture zones and magnetic anomalies flanking the Southwest Indian Ridge.

During the initial break-up in the Early Jurassic, a marine transgression swept over the Horn of Africa covering Triassic planation surfaces with sandstone, limestone, shale, marls and evaporites.

At Brazilian latitudes spreading is more difficult to assess because of the lack of palaeo-magnetic data, but rifting occurred in Nigeria at the Benue Trough c. 118 Ma.

[49] The first phases of Andean orogeny in the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous were characterised by extensional tectonics, rifting, the development of back-arc basins and the emplacement of large batholiths.

Such kind of subduction is held responsible not only for the intense contractional deformation that different lithologies were subject to, but also the uplift and erosion known to have occurred from the Late Cretaceous onward.

[51][52] Insular India began to collide with Asia circa 70 Ma, forming the Indian subcontinent, since which more than 1,400 km (870 mi) of crust has been absorbed by the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen.

The opening of the Tasman Gateway at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (33 Ma) resulted in abrupt cooling but the Oligocene became a period of high rainfall with swamps in southeastern Australia.

Palaeontological evidence indicates the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) was established in the Late Oligocene c. 23 Ma with the full opening of the Drake Passage and the deepening of the Tasman Gateway.

The oldest oceanic crust in the Drake Passage, however, is 34 to 29 Ma-old which indicates that the spreading between the Antarctic and South American plates began near the Eocene-Oligocene boundary.

[58] Deep sea environments in Tierra del Fuego and the North Scotia Ridge during the Eocene and Oligocene indicate a "Proto-ACC" opened during this period.

Later, 26 to 14 Ma, a series of events severally restricted the Proto-ACC: change to shallow marine conditions along the North Scotia Ridge; closure of the Fuegan Seaway, the deep sea that existed in Tierra del Fuego; and uplift of the Patagonian Cordillera.

During the Miocene, the Drake Passage began to widen, and as water flow between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula increased, the renewed ACC resulted in cooler global climate.

[66] The Late Devonian extinction probably also resulted in osteolepiform fishes evolving into the amphibian tetrapods, the earliest land vertebrates, in Greenland and Russia.

Australia, however, was still located near the Equator during the Early Carboniferous, and during this period, temnospondyl and lepospondyl amphibians and the first amniote reptilians evolved, all closely related to the Laurasian fauna, but spreading ice eventually drove these animals away from Gondwana entirely.

The Jurassic was mostly one of hot-house conditions and, while vertebrates managed to diversify in this environment, plants have left little evidence of such development, apart from Cheiroleidiacean conifers and Caytoniales and other groups of seed ferns.

Insect orders associated with pollination, such as beetles, flies, butterflies and moths, wasps, bees, ants, radiated continuously from the Permian-Triassic, long before the arrival of the angiosperms.

[72] Dinosaurs continued to prosper but, as the angiosperm diversified, conifers, bennettitaleans and pentoxylaleans disappeared from Gondwana c. 115 Ma together with the specialised herbivorous ornithischians, whilst generalist browsers, such as several families of sauropodomorph Saurischia, prevailed.

[72] Gondwanatheria is an extinct group of non-therian mammals with a Gondwanan distribution (South America, Africa, Madagascar, India, Zealandia and Antarctica) during the Late Cretaceous and Palaeogene.