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Gondwana ( , originally Gondwanaland) was a southern supercontinent that existed about 500 to 200 Ma ago. Gondwana included most of the landmasses in today's southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia-New Guinea, and New Zealand, as well as Arabia and the Indian subcontinent, which are in the Northern Hemisphere. The name is derived from the Gondwana region of central northern India (from Sanskrit gondavana "forest of Gond").
The adjective "Gondwanan" is in common use in biogeography when referring to patterns of distribution of living organisms, typically when the organisms are restricted to two or more of the now-discontinuous regions that were once part of Gondwana; e.g., the Proteaceae, a family of plants that is known only from Chile, South Africa, and Australia are considered to have a "Gondwanan distribution". This pattern is often considered to indicate an archaic, or relict lineage.







