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7528 |
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Date: September 07, 2024 at 09:23:08
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance across Earth's surf |
URL: https://phys.org/news/2024-09-witness-billion-years-tectonic-plates.html |
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Using information from inside the rocks on Earth's
surface, we have reconstructed the plate tectonics of
the planet over the last 1.8 billion years.
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Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance
across Earth's surface in a new animation
1
Sep 6, 2024
1
Earth Earth Sciences
Editors' notes
Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance
across Earth's surface in a new animation
by Alan Collins , The Conversation
tectonic plates
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Using information from inside the rocks on Earth's
surface, we have reconstructed the plate tectonics of
the planet over the last 1.8 billion years.
It is the first time Earth's geological record has been
used like this, looking so far back in time. This has
enabled us to make an attempt at mapping the planet
over the last 40% of its history, which you can see in
the animation below.
The work, led by Xianzhi Cao from the Ocean University
in China, is now published in the open-access journal
Geoscience Frontiers.
A beautiful dance
Mapping our planet through its long history creates a
beautiful continental dance—mesmerizing in itself and a
work of natural art.
It starts with the map of the world familiar to
everyone. Then India rapidly moves south, followed by
parts of Southeast Asia as the past continent of
Gondwana forms in the Southern Hemisphere.
Around 200 million years ago (Ma or mega-annum in the
reconstruction), when the dinosaurs walked the earth,
Gondwana linked with North America, Europe and northern
Asia to form a large supercontinent called Pangea.
Then, the reconstruction carries on back through time.
Pangea and Gondwana were themselves formed from older
plate collisions. As time rolls back, an earlier
supercontinent called Rodinia appears. It doesn't stop
here. Rodinia, in turn, is formed by the break-up of an
even older supercontinent called Nuna about 1.35
billion years ago.
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[7529] [7530] [7531] |
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7529 |
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Date: September 07, 2024 at 09:33:59
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance across Earth's... |
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way cool...amazing they could figure that all out! i remember being in high school thinking it sure looked like africa and the americas fit together...
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[7530] [7531] |
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7530 |
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Date: September 07, 2024 at 17:44:05
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance across... |
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But we were crazy to think so.
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Responses:
[7531] |
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7531 |
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Date: September 07, 2024 at 18:51:30
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance across... |
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ha...yeah...and soon after that i read wegener's book and voila...
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