Terra Australis Orogen

This vast orogenic belt stretched for c. 18,000 km (11,000 mi) along-strike and involved, from west to east (in the ancient, paleogeographic reference frame), landmasses belonging to the modern-day Andean margin of South America, the South African Cape, West Antarctica, Victoria Land in East Antarctica, Eastern Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand.

The formation of the Terra Australis Orogen is associated with the breakup of Rodinia at the end of the Neoproterozoic Era and the creation of Panthalassa, the paleo-Pacific Ocean, and it was succeeded by the Gondwanide orogeny with the formation of the supercontinent Pangea in the middle Paleozoic Era.

The decline of orogenic activity in the late Paleozoic is related to the assembly of the supercontinent Pangea.

[1] The TAO evolved through a series of extensional back-arcs separated by compressional events when the subducting oceanic plate got stuck in Gondwana's margin.

[5] As Gondwana was amalgamated in the Early Palaeozoic during the so-called Pan-African orogenies the TAO propagated along the southern (modern coordinates) Proto-Pacific/Iapetus margin of the supercontinent.

The Terra Australis Orogen at 180 Ma crossing the South Pole (centre right) and flanked by the Phoenix - Farallon (left) and Phoenix- Izanagi (right) ridges. The Pacific Plate (triangle at bottom) has just been created.