Because we are more familiar with the shape of the continents of today, going backward through time makes it easier to see how the continents arose from Pangea. The first animation shows this by assembling Pangea from the present-day continents.
The second animation goes forward in time and shows the splitting up of Pangea into Africa and South America (North America, India and Australia disappear from view in this animation.) The grey band indicates the distribution of the Triassic plant family Glossopteris, the pink band the distribution of the land animal Lystrosaurus.
These animations were adapted from scenes originally produced for the US Geological Survey video Secrets in Stone and converted to animated gifs for web display. http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/parks/animate/ (accessed22 August 2004)