system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does the fossil record show significant changes in the global diversity of land animals coinciding with the formation or breakup of supercontinents?

For instance, something similar to the Columbian Exchange, when colonization spread invasive species between continents?
gpt
You're looking for the field of biogeography! Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space over geologic time. It's super fascinating stuff.

There is a lot of evidence for tectonic theory in the paleo record, including related animals on either side of a divergent plate boundary (think west side of Africa and east side of South America). The processes that you mention, tectonic movement, generally happens too slowly to be associated with big extinction events, but you can certainly see speciation occur over time as populations become separated over time. Some smaller extinctions may occur as a result of populations being brought together (land bridge or similar, two species that filled the same niche now have to compete for resources) or as an ecosystem changes slowly over time due to something like mountain uplift. Generally mass extinctions are caused by climatic events, like fast global temperature change or sea level rise, or one-off events like volcanic eruption or the well known asteroid impact.