High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Paleo-Tethys Ocean was an ancient Paleozoic ocean. It was located between the paleocontinent Gondwana and the so called Hunic terranes. These are divided into the European Hunic (today the crust under parts of Central Europe (called "Armorica") and Iberia) and Asiatic Hunic (today the crust of China and parts of eastern Central Asia). A large transform fault is supposed to have separated the two terranes. Image of Paleo-Tethys Ocean, before the Cimmerian Plate moves north, which made the ocean closed, the Paleo-Tethys Ocean closed off about 180 mya. ~290 mya (Early Permian). The Cimmerian plate starts to move northward, closing the Paleo-Tethys Ocean, while the Tethys Ocean begins to open from the south. ~249 mya (Permian-Triassic boundary). The Paleo-Tethys Ocean began to form when the two small terranes rifted away from Gondwana in the late Ordovician, to begin moving toward Euramerica in the north, in the process the Rheic Ocean between Old Red Sandstone Continent and the Hunic terranes was to disappear.