A paleocontinent or palaeocontinent is a distinct area of continental crust that existed as a major landmass in the geological past.

All these metasedimentary rocks were originally deposited in the marine Rhenohercynian Basin, a back-arc basin south of the paleocontinent of Laurussia.

They lived during the late Lower Cambrian (Botomian/Toyonian) in the so-called Olenellus-zone in the former paleocontinent of Laurentia.

Examples include Laurentia, Baltica and Avalonia, which collided together during the Caledonian orogeny to form the Old Red Sandstone paleocontinent of Laurussia.

It is common in and limited to the Lower Cambrian (Upper Olenellus-zone) shelf deposits across the southwestern US, which constitutes part of the former paleocontinent of Laurentia.

It is the earliest unit in the marine-transgressive sedimentary rock sequence deposited during the early Paleozoic as sea level rose to gradually inundate the craton of the paleocontinent of Laurentia.

Laurentia is the North American paleocontinent, which also includes present day Northwest Ireland, Scotland, Greenland, the North Slope of Alaska, and the Chukotsk peninsula of NE Russia.

In the Early Paleozoic the majority of all continental landmass were united in the paleocontinent of Gondwana (containing the crust of future Africa, South America, southern Eurasia, Australia and Antarctica), which lay centered around the South Pole.