Will There Ever Be Another Pangea? [super continent]

LiveScience ^ | October 4, 2018 | Aylin Woodward, Live Science Contributor

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"According to Mitchell, a new supercontinent forms every 600 million years or so, but that cycle might be speeding up. This suggests that the next Pangea, dubbed Amasia (or Pangea Proxima) would form sooner than we expect. Mitchell thinks the cycle is speeding up because the Earth’s internal heat — hoarded in the planet's core since the time of its formation — is dissipating, meaning that convection is happening faster.

"Given that the heyday of Pangea was probably 300 million years ago, Amasia's would be 300 million years from now," Mitchell said. "But it could form as soon as 200 million years from now."

However, predicting the birth year of Amasia isn't so simple.

"The difficult thing about predicting the Pangea of the future is that you can't take present-day plate motions and hit fast-forward," Mitchell said. Plate motions can change unexpectedly, with imperfections in the seafloor causing plates to veer from their trajectories."

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[scottinoc]

Not a big fan of Pangea. I kind of like the oceans separating us from the lefties on the right and the lefties on the left.

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[Artemis Webb]

I think you can order one on Amazon. But it only has three stars.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*

[Vaquero]

My favorite is Gondwanaland. It just rolls of your tongue 👅. Gondwanaland.

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Formation and breakup of supercontinent Pangaea.

[Bob Celeste]

.roughly 251 million years ago, the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

[Currentriverrat]

pfl

[al baby]

Stop super continent now buy continent credits

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Before Pangaea, there was this other supercontinent...

Rodinia

Rodinia is a Neoproterozoic supercontinent that was assembled 1.1–0.9 billion years ago and broke up 750–633 million years ago.[5]

Valentine & Moores 1970 were probably the first to recognize a Precambrian supercontinent, which they named ‘Pangaea I’.[5]

It was renamed ‘Rodinia’ by McMenamin & McMenamin 1990 who also were the first to produce a reconstruction and propose a temporal framework for the supercontinent.[6]

Rodinia formed at c. 1.23 Ga by accretion and collision of fragments produced by breakup of an older supercontinent, Columbia, assembled by global-scale 2.0–1.8 Ga collisional events.[7]

Rodinia broke up in the Neoproterozoic with its continental fragments reassembled to form Pannotia 633–573 million years ago.

In contrast with Pannotia, little is known yet about the exact configuration and geodynamic history of Rodinia.

Paleomagnetic evidence provides some clues to the paleolatitude of individual pieces of the Earth’s crust, but not to their longitude, which geologists have pieced together by comparing similar geologic features, often now widely dispersed.

The extreme cooling of the global climate around 717–635 million years ago (the so-called Snowball Earth of the Cryogenian Period) and the rapid evolution of primitive life during the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian periods are thought to have been triggered by the breaking up of Rodinia or to a slowing down of tectonic processes.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodinia

[Vaquero]

Love the poster reunited pangia. Sent it around.

[dp0622]

Yes but you have to add the sauce at the exact right time.

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The Palisades of New Jersey were formed as a result of the breakup of supercontinent Pangaea, beginning roughly 200 million years ago. They were underground lava/magma flows that rose up from below as the northeast coast began to fracture. It was the birth of the Atlantic Ocean.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Gondwanaland Always makes me think of Stanley and Livingstone in giant pots of boiling water with howling natives all around chucking spears and banging tattoos on hollow logs.

[SuperLuminal]

" Next came Rodinia, which dominated the planet between 1.2 billion and 750 million years ago."

Yep! I remember it well...If I hadn't been broke at the time, I could have bought lots of land and been rich now...

[Moonman62]

Notice how the interesting stuff didn’t start until about 500 million years ago. Land was devoid of life until then, too.