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Travel My Hometown In L. Travel The last artists crafting a Thai royal treasure. Subscriber Exclusive Content. The first supercontinent we know of formed 3 billion years ago, as islands of primitive continental crust clustered together to form the first continent on Earth. Called Ur, its remains make up parts of Australia, India, and Madagascar.
Over the next million years, additional land was formed through volcanic action, clustering with Ur to form Kenorland. When Kenorland broke apart, the cycle began anew. In the next 2. In , American geologist Christopher Scotese named this hypothetical supercontinent Pangea Ultima , meaning the final Pangea. But realizing it will not be the last supercontinent, the thermal energy stored inside Earth is enough to complete another two or three Wilson cycles, he later reamed it Pangea Proxima - literally the next Pangea.
From his study of the formation of previous supercontinents, Scotese imagined a ring-shaped landmass clustered around the remains of an inner sea. As the oceanic crust of the Atlantic Ocean is slowly sliding beneath the continental crust, the oceanic basin of the Atlantic is closing and the continents are pulled together.
American and South African researchers proposed an alternative arrangement called Amasia. Extrapolating from the gradual widening of the Atlantic, they envision the Pacific Ocean closing as the Americas drift westward, fusing with Australia, Siberia, Eurasia and Africa. Only Antarctica, surrounded by tectonic faults, remains isolated. In the late s, British geophysicist Roy Livermore postulated a configuration that he dubbed Novopangae.
As new tectonic plates formed, they collided with existing landmasses, forming a series of ever-larger supercontinents: Columbia, then Rodinia and most recently Pangea, which formed about million years ago, stretching from pole to pole along the longitudes of the mid-Atlantic. What will the next Pangea look like? It's hard to tell. Nevertheless, researchers have theorized a number of possible outcomes. From his study of the formation of previous supercontinents, Scotese imagines a ring-shaped landmass.
In his scenario, the Americas butt against Africa, which tilts eastward to dock with Eurasia; the latter has flipped perpendicular. South America and India form the coastline of an inland sea. The next decade saw American and South African researchers proposing an alternative arrangement called Amasia. Antarctica remains a separate landmass. In the late s, British geophysicist Roy Livermore postulated a configuration that he dubbed Novopangaea.
Here, the Americas form its eastern edge, their western coastlines swinging together like pincers to embrace the docked mass of Antarctica and Australia at the hub. Africa legs off to the northwest.
A recent projection, Aurica, proposed in , builds on research from the American Geophysical Union correlating ocean tides with the supercontinent cycle. Aurica is roughly similar to Novopangaea, but posits a rift separating China and India from the rest of Eurasia, causing the former to collide with Australia from the west while the latter circles the globe eastward before docking with the new supercontinent.
However the next supercontinent arises, the cycle will have cataclysmic environmental effects. Violent outcomes occur whenever two plates meet.
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