Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig pangaea.us. NS
Answer
pangaea.us. 5 NS ns38.worldnic.com.
pangaea.us. 5 NS ns37.worldnic.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0