In 50 million to 200 million years' time, all of Earth's current continents will be pushed together into a single landmass around the North Pole. That is the conclusion of an effort1 to model the slow movements of the continents over the next tens of millions of years. A supercontinent last formed 300 million years ago, when all the land masses grouped together on the equator as Pangaea, centred about where West Africa is now. After looking at the geology of mountain ranges around the world, geologists had assumed that the next supercontinent would form either in the same place as Pangaea, closing the Atlantic Ocean like an accordion, or on the other side of the world, in the middle of the current Pacific Ocean. Read more
Earth's landmasses were not always what they are today. Continents formed as Earth's crustal plates shifted and collided over long periods of time. This video shows how today's continents are thought to have evolved over the last 600 million years, and where they'll end up in the next 100 million years. Paleogeographic Views of Earth's History provided by Ron Blakey, Professor of Geology, Northern Arizona University.
To date there had been no realistic mathematicalphysical theory describing the interaction between the convective movement in the Earths mantle and the continental drift but V. Trubitsin, M. Kaban und M. Rothacher from the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences have now developed a numerical model(2), based on the current position of the continents, the structures of the Earths mantle obtained through geophysical measurements, and the current displacement rates on the surface. Hence they were able to calculate the future position of the continents in hundreds of millions of years.
A new study has suggested that supercontinents like Pangaea can form when a huge plume of hot rock from deep inside Earth wells up between the continental plates, pushing them apart until all Earth's landmasses collide. According to a report in National Geographic News, this is the finding from a new study that suggests-contrary to accepted theory-that such a process formed the supercontinent Pangaea 300 million years ago.
Existing during the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic -- some 250 million years ago -- Pangaea is the supercontinent that comprised of all of our modern day continents, all rolled up in to one big one. Eurasia was up the top, swinging down through North and South America, cross to the east for Africa, then south for India, Antarctica and finally Australia
Credit: C. R. Scotese (U. Texas at Arlington), PALEOMAP
According to the PALEOMAP Project, in 250 million years from now, the current formation will once again take on a united continent shape, somewhat similar to the original one, but with a nice oceanic gap between the top half -- containing Eurasia, Africa, North and South America -- and the bottom half -- containing Antarctica and Australia.