Pangea in Late Triassic time. The Newark basin is part of the rift zone that formed during the breakup of Pangea, which was a supercontinent consisting of the majority of the present-day continents. Note that southern North America was located along the Triassic equator. The rift zone formed during the separation of North America and Africa, which led to the opening of the North Atlantic ocean. Modified from Olsen (1997). The animation below shows the progressive breakup of Pangea from the time period 150 Ma to the present. By 150 Ma, the central North Atlantic Ocean had already opened somewhat. Animation from the website http://www.odsn.de/odsn/services/paleomap/animation.html, which allows users to generate a plate reconstruction for any time in the past 150 million years using a variety of map projections and views of the globe.
