Pangea: extravagant sedimentary resource formation during supercontinent configuration, an overview

The Pangea supercontinent stage — the interval from the Late Carboniferous to earliest Jurassic — is known for its rich and diverse economic resources from sedimentary systems. Their uniqueness is not the abundance, but the resource association on a global scale and even more the time/space distributions. The evolution of the supercontinent configuration in context of icehouse to coldhouse stages generated maximum coal, evaporite, and phosphate deposition, furthermore important hydrocarbon, uranium, and sedimentary metal deposits. Sedimentary Fe- and Al-deposits are very rare. Also typical is the absence of resources from organic deposition during the Early Triassic. The extravagant spatial distribution of these resource systems, but also the timing of their occurrences, is linked to the tectonic evolution of Pangea during accretion, zenith (amalgamation), and breakup, as well as to the resulting paleogeographic, climatic/oceanographic, and ecological reorganization of the biosphere. The published data on Pangean resources are reviewed and reveal a conspicuous ‘Pangean’ pattern. These time/space relationships are explained in the context of paleotectonic and ecological changes during the supercontinent stage.