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How did the collision of Gondwana and Euramerica help form Pangea?

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Watch Earth's Continents Move — paleogeography Watch a time-lapse of Earth changing through geologic time, from the Cambrian Era to the projected period of Pangea Proxima.

The formation of the supercontinent Pangea was driven by plate tectonics, a process involving the movement and collision of Earth's lithospheric plates. During the late Paleozoic Era, the final assembly of Pangea occurred as the southern supercontinent Gondwana collided with Euramerica (also known as Laurussia), which had previously formed from the union of Laurentia and Baltica.123

This collision was a protracted process that began with Gondwana impinging upon Euramerica during the Devonian Period, with complete fusion occurring by the Late Carboniferous or Early Permian periods. The tectonic interaction between these massive landmasses resulted in significant mountain-building events, such as the Alleghenian orogeny in the southern Appalachians and the development of the Variscan orogenic belt across Europe. As Gondwana moved northward, its western promontory overrode the continental margin, causing crustal thickening, folding, and faulting that effectively locked the continents together into the single, massive landmass of Pangea.345