Dear MEL Topic Readers,
How the next 'supercontinent' will form
The present continents are above-sea level tectonic plates, pieces of Earth’s crust and uppermost mantle. Major continental crusts are North American Plate, Eurasian Plate, African Plate, Antarctic Plate, Indo-Australian Plate, and South American Plate. Also, there are oceanic crusts like Pacific Plate, Philippine Sea Plate, and Arabian Plate. Tectonic plates are like leaves drifting across a pond. Though they change their positions continuously, humans haven’t and won’t notice those changes as they are moving much more slowly than human evolution and history. In fact, the present seven continents were once a supercontinent called Pangaea about 200 million years ago. It broke apart and spread out to form the continents we see now. Geologists say that we are about halfway through a disperse-assemble cycle so that these now-separate continents will become one supercontinent again in the next 200 million years. Dinosaurs appeared and disappeared before the last breakup of Pangaea. It is clearly unpredictable if our descendants will ever exist to live on the supercontinent. But it is certain that the existing continents and islands are shrinking at a recognizable speed because of the sea level rise.
Enjoy reading the 10th-anniversary issue of Topic Reading to learn about what the next supercontinent might be like.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220401-how-the-next-supercontinent-will-form
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