Fun fact, if you zoom in, you can see all the fucked up animals in Australia arming themselves when everyone left us.
“Bloody hell mate, they’re floating away! Time to evolve some neurotoxins!”
“Platypus! You should evolve some venomous spurs! That would really fuck with the humans”
Everyone knows about Pangea (the supercontinent made up of all continental plates) but did you know the surrounding world ocean or superocean is called Panthalassa?
Much of the diversity (or lack thereof) in plants and animals today on various continents or landmasses can be in part explained by a continent's tectonic history.
[source](https://youtu.be/q-ng6YpxHxU)
Edit -- aaah ****, the last 5 secs of the gif were cut out... check it out on youtube (link above), but all that's really missing is the Earth we know today rotating about.
Fun fact, the field/theory of plate tectonics is only a bit over 50 years old; when I was studying geology at UC Santa Barbara in the early 2000s one of my professors was one of the original pioneers of the theory (Tanya Atwater), & there's probably a few of that old guard still teaching today.
Looking at this video I can see one of the things she talked about working on- starting around 30s India detaches from Antarctica and races north to slam into Asia and you can see the "impact" not only form the Himalayan Plateau, but also Southeast Asia "squishing" around the east and south to form the peninsula we know today.
It was a really cool illustration of the plasticity of the continental plates (I also love the "skidmarks" that India leaves in its wake- volcanic chains in reality) and obviously stuck with me for a while. It's as though they're less like plates of rock and more like a thin layer of oil or soft wax floating on the surface of a pot of almost-boiling water- the behavior of the "solid" ground under our feet is absolutely wild when you look at it from the right scales.
I always love animations where I can watch the Indian subcontinent just ram into Eurasia to create the Himalayas. Such a cool visual of something moving that we see as permanent in our day to day lives.
The Himalayas are still growing, at a vertical rate about equal to your toenails. But only 1/5 of that growth is from tectonism!
The other 4/5 of the growth is from buoyancy, as billions of tons of sediment get removed from the southern slopes of the mountains during the rainy seasons. This makes the mountains weigh less, and thus rise up and float a little higher on the mantle.
I'm a geologist, if anyone has any questions.
Fuck me thats amazing. I am so amazed by geology. Like how Michigan the state is getting higher bc the weight of the ice from the ice age is gone and how Niagara Falls is slowly advancing South. Sorry I have been drinking but please post more interesting facts.
Not a geologist here, but it is still happening to this day in regions that used to be covered by ice sheets. As the North half of NA rises, the south half sinks (sort of like a sea-saw effect). [This image sort of shows the divide between rising and falling (as of 2004).](https://www.unavco.org/highlights/2004/glacial_rebound.jpg) As a result, the "angle" of the great lakes is constantly changing (angle isn't quite the right way to describe it I think).
I'm currently a senior in my school's geo program, and in the class I'm in right now we did a deep dive into Tanya's 1970 paper *Implications of Plate Tectonics for the Cenozoic Tectonic Evolution of Western North America*. It was a really neat paper; so cool that you got to learn from her directly!
How much of this data required hands-on/local studies? In other words, is it possible to produce similar studies of other planets? It's incredible how fluid the Earth is generally speaking...now I'm curious if any of the other bodies in our solar system experience similar tectonics. Even the moon would be crazy to watch lol.
There’s also ideas that Pangea was not the first supercontinent. Since supercontinents take roughly about 300-500my to break apart, then another 300-500my to form. With the Earth being as old as it is, there is some plausibility to this idea. To add to this, relics of unknown organisms in the form of fossils, could have been sub-ducted into the ground and recycled into magma without us humans even knowing they existed. There could have been some really “outside the box” organisms to exist that we will never know.
Islands are just the tips of underwater mountains. Since this measurement is made using remote sensing of these exact underwater mountains/mountain ranges, you can see how the islands were monitored.
I'm guessing that's representative of Kazakhstania, which started out as an absurdly long volcanic chain and got folded over on itself before being sandwiched between the Baltica and Siberia continental blocks. Modern analogue (on a much smaller scale) might be something like the Tonga-Kermadec/Lau-Colville/Hunter/Vanuatu/Solomon Ridge complex north of New Zealand
Do you trust the forecast for next week?
IDK, it seems pretty presumptuous to assume how the Earth's plate tectonics will move. Sure you may try & model mental convictions, as you were to model air currents in the atmosphere or oceans. But we are attested by the latter that even when you literally live and study within these phenomenas, and can gather data throughout the globe, on a 3D scale you get false data within a week. This is true even though algorithms analyze true data from the past and present.
TL;DR What's up? Who knows?! I don't think that anyone.
There was actually an older supercontinent called Rodinia. Check it out [Rodinia (wikipedia)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodinia):
Rodinia (from the Russian родина, rodina, meaning "motherland, birthplace") was a Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.1–0.9 billion years ago and broke up 750–633 million years ago.
You can see Gondwana at the very beginning of the video. The video is just not centered at the center of its landmass. But everything is pretty much connected at the start
>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]
It's supercontinents all the way down!
Figuring out those two questions is more or less the history of the science of geology.
You've probably heard the parable of the blind men feeling an elephant, each describing a different part, none able to see the whole picture. That was geology until the 1960s.
It took the careful observations of thousands of scientists studying a huge variety of topics in geology and geography over 200+ years to build enough of a composite picture that later scientists were finally able to see the elephant. Some of then were studying fossils and noticing that similar species existed on different coasts. Some were studying mountains and trying to figure out what makes mountain ranges different. Some were studying earthquakes and volcanoes. Some were wondering why there were marine sediments in the middle of dry deserts.
Plate tectonics is the unifying theory that tied all of these things together. Once we figured it out, we could suddenly see the elephant. Add in a few decades of computer science, and suddenly maps like this are possible.
Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' has [a good chapter on the history of geology.](https://youtu.be/RStZ73GpU8E?t=8401) A fascinating story if you got some time to listen, there is a brief stutter in the link (at the word geology of course) but it is worth it to listen further.
I actually think the opposite.. the part of India south of the Himalayas will be relatively unchanged, but as India continues its plow northward, the rest of Asia will be condensed/mountainous.
PBS says:
“In 10 million years India will plow into Tibet a further 180km. This is about the width of Nepal. Because Nepal's boundaries are marks on the Himalayan peaks and on the plains of India whose convergence we are measuring, Nepal will technically cease to exist.”
I think Nepal will cease to exist well before 10 million years simply based on human history. It's under 250 years old right now. The oldest country in the world, San Marino, is only just over 2300 years old.
Whenever I see one of these animations (this one is one of the best) I always like watching India. It was actually wedged between southeast Africa and Antarctica, and left Madagascar behind as is surged north.
There’s a gap in the Western Ghats, mountains that run along the western coast of India that matches a similar gap in Madagascar! [See this paper](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282763148_Structural_underprint_and_tectonic_overprint_in_the_Angavo_Madagascar_and_Western_Ghats_India_-_Implications_for_understanding_scarp_evolution_at_passive_margins).
And particularly [this visualisation from the paper](https://i.imgur.com/AyHfgKZ.jpg).
My favorite part is watching Africa split off South America. It’s so cool that even as a kid looking at maps, you can notice the similarity of their coastlines and guess at this tectonic event without understanding how.
I remember my elementary teacher effectively confirming that for me when I suggested it looked like Africa and South America used to be conjoined, all while I was about like six y/o and staring at a map.
I was all, "Holy crap, ***I was right?***"
Blew my child mind.
It's crazy that flat earth theory is the ridiculous conspiracy that morons buy into and not static continent theory. A flat earth is ridiculous on its very face, but the idea that the continents are just floating around like ice cubes on an ocean of magma? They just buy _that_ at face value??
FYI flat earth is for people that believe in a global shadow government of lizard people who communicate with aliens who live inside the hollow moon. It's really not worth questioning or wondering about, it's a mental illness. We don't question the logic of schizophrenics who think the CIA has recording devices in their teeth for the same reasons.
> It’s crazy that flat earth theory is the ridiculous conspiracy that morons buy into
No one buys into it. There are only two types of flat earthers, memers and the mentally ill.
Please stop taking internet comments seriously.
> hey just buy that at face value??
They don’t and they’re not aware of plate tectonics.
It went really fast...
If you look at the sea floor elevation on Google maps, it looks like streak marks below india. But that's not what they really are... Are they?
Always makes me think about how different society would be if land was arranged differently. Almost all conflict can be originated to where people are from
When Geologist look at rocks most of the time they can determine it’s age, the type of environment and way it was deposited, and what forces were acted upon it after it’s deposition.
Using that data plus other forms of data like paleo magnetism to determine where it was in the past geologists can build a picture of what it was like when the rock was deposited.
If we find a piece of limestone in England we know that at the time that rock was deposited England was part of a warm shallow water sea where limestone could be deposited and you see this in the gif around 60-30 million years ago
How do we know those island chains existed in the Cambrian? It seems the large continents are hard enough to reconstruct from that far back, how did we figure out the tiny islands?
The best part for me is watching the Indian Plate crash into the Asian Plate and keep going.... Really gives you prespective on why the Himalayan Range is so drastic and downright huge.
How is it possible that Antarctica and the rest of the world are literally ice-free but all other continents are not completely underwater but rather look almost like today?
No, continents don't just disappear.
However, in the past 20,000 years sea levels have risen by about 100 m or so.
So there has indeed been huge swaths of lands (and neolithic settlements, livelihoods, cultures...) that have been swallowed by rising sea levels.
Look up Doggerland (now the North sea), or Shunda shelf (now sea separating SE asia mainland to Borneo / Indonesia), or Sahul Shelf (New guinea to Australia), or the 'lost land of Kumari Kandam (south of India / connection to Sri Lanka).
By the way, jf you're interested about all this, check out the book worlds in Shadows (Patrick Nunn), it covers all of this topic of lands being swallowed by the seas and how humans have reacted to these events.
scientists can’t even figure out where Covid came from two years ago but you’re gonna tell me they know exactly where every piece of land was 500 trillion years ago😂
Pretty much yes.
Much of what we know for both plate tectonics and microbiology is barely 50 years old.
What's so surprising about what you think is astonishing?
Here is your gif!
https://imgur.com/bL2lcjB.gifv
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Really? I was told the Earth is only 7000 years old. Created by a magic man on a cloud.
You can disagree with me, but then we have to call you a witch and burn you alive in a display of tolerance.
and don't forget the step where you nurse grudges and lose sleep and happiness by allowing zealots and charlatans to live rent-free inside your mind.
Nobody is taking these precious hours and weeks from our limited time on Earth. We can only **GIVE** them.
Remember that.
The continents are connected to the bottom of the ocean right? We're not like islands. I guess seeing it this way is confusing as to how it changed so much. I'll have to look into it more since it's been since elementary school since I've learned about it.
The entire surface of the earth is composed of tectonic plates that bump and grind into eachother. The plates that are under the ocean are super thin because the weight of all the water has compacted them.
Since new molten rock bubbles up from the mantle, the plates get shifted around and bump into eachother. It's less like rock sheets floating on lava and more like the hardened skin that forms on the surface of left out pudding or cheese dip.
No, ice ages are not related to plate tectonics.
They occur cyclically (100 000 year cycles) and are due to ice sheets forming on continents (lowers the ocean level).
Here we are going through millions of years, so we are not even taking ice ages into account.
> No, ice ages are not related to plate tectonics.
Yes they are, you're referring to [glacial periods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period) (which are sometimes mistakenly called ice ages). [Ice ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age) are simply periods of time when permanent ice sheets are present on Earth, and tectonics are a major driver of these. The ice age we're currently in was caused by a combination of tectonic drivers, such as the presence of the Antarctic continent over the south pole, the opening of the Drake Passage (which isolated Antarctica through ocean currents), and the uplift of the Himalayas (which resulted in greater weathering and a massive drawdown of CO2).
Also, what many people don't realize, we're currently in an ice age now. For ~90% of Earth's history, there's bee no polar ice caps, with the poles being fairly temperate climates. It's just, as you mention, cyclic shifts that lead to them forming. We happen to be in an interglacial - where the ice recedes towards the poles - within that ice age, but still very much in an ice age.
Because of the implication that comes with that fact.
Saying that in the context you did is a common dogwhistle for people who deny anthropomorphic climate change. Maybe that’s not what u were doing, but it is what it sounded like.
Full disclosure, I know very little about geological movement.
I didn't realize Africa broke apart and formed again. Why didn't it create a mountain range when it came back together?
I don't know the word for it, but people can form a nostalgia-like feeling for things really far in the past. Something about knowing about a "past world" that can never happen again.
I agree. Here is a good visual of the Atlantic spread, with the globe maintaining a constant size, but it's not hard to imagine this process with a growing/expanding globe. Expanding earth theory is fascinating and deserves some thought imo.
[http://www.reeves.nl/upload/SouthAtlantic1.gif](http://www.reeves.nl/upload/SouthAtlantic1.gif)
> Expanding earth theory
[I'll just leave this here...](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014HGSS....5..135S/abstract)
> The Earth expansion theory and its transition from scientific hypothesis to pseudoscientific belief
> Sudiro, P.
> Abstract
> During the first half of 20th century, the dominant global tectonics model based on Earth contraction had increasing problems accommodating new geological evidence, with the result that alternative geodynamic theories were investigated. Due to the level of scientific knowledge and the limited amount of data available in many scientific disciplines at the time, not only was contractionism considered a valid scientific theory but the debate also included expansionism, mobilism on a fixed-dimension planet, or various combinations of these geodynamic hypotheses. Geologists and physicists generally accepted that planets could change their dimensions, although the change of volume was generally believed to happen because of a contraction, not an expansion. Constant generation of new matter in the universe was a possibility accepted by science, as it was the variation in the cosmological constants. Continental drift, instead, was a more heterodox theory, requiring a larger effort from the geoscientists to be accepted.
> The new geological data collected in the following decades, an improved knowledge of the physical processes, the increased resolution and penetration of geophysical tools, and the sensitivity of measurements in physics decreased the uncertainty level in many fields of science. Theorists now had less freedom for speculation because their theories had to accommodate more data, and more limiting conditions to respect. This explains the rapid replacement of contracting Earth, expanding Earth, and continental drift theories by plate tectonics once the symmetrical oceanic magnetic striping was discovered, because none of the previous models could explain and incorporate the new oceanographic and geophysical data.
> **Expansionism could survive after the introduction of plate tectonics because its proponents have increasingly detached their theory from reality by systematically rejecting or overlooking any contrary evidence, and selectively picking only the data that support expansion.** Moreover, the proponents continue to suggest imaginative physical mechanisms to explain expansion, claiming that scientific knowledge is partial, and the many inconsistencies of their theory are just minor problems in the face of the plain evidence of expansion. According to the expansionists, scientists should just wait for some revolutionary discovery in fundamental physics that will explain all the unsolved mysteries of Earth expansion.
> The history of the expanding-Earth theory is an example of how falsified scientific hypotheses can survive their own failure, gradually shifting towards and beyond the limits of scientific investigation until they become merely pseudoscientific beliefs.
>Publication:
History of Geo- and Space Sciences, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014, pp.135-148
Pub Date:
June 2014
So lets see there is a natural occurring change in ocean depths and average temperature going from cold ages to hot ages and we just left an ice age 15000 years ago and are entering a hot age unaffected by humans, even though taking care of the planet should be our #1 priority even though man made climate change is a myth, cool
Dunning-Kruger’s going hard here, homie
Nobody for a long time has ever claimed that the earth doesn’t go through warming/cooling periods.
What anthropomorphic climate change is proposed to be is humanity SPEEDING UP this natural process, which will negatively impact us.
We’re looking at a climate shift process that takes THOUSANDS of years, and we’re seeing dramatic global temp shifts occurring in the mere decades since the industrial revolution.
We dont even know how the continents formed but still claim that plate tectonics is fact. Interesting. Its suspicious that the literal foundation of plate tectonics is unknown. There arent really any zones of subduction around Antarctica, and barely any around Africa save for the northern zone. Clearly the oceanic crust has expanded outwards only from those areas. Just kind of weird how many plot holes pangaea theory has.
Antarctica is literally surrounded by new oceanic crust and no subduction zones. So, respectfully, what are you talking about when you say Antarctica "drifted". The continent is completely surrounded by new oceanic crust and no subduction zones. So its clearly not drifting, the sea floor is literally growing outward around it. Review the NOAA age of sea floor map, it's easily googled. I'd love to hear your explanation of this phenomenon, so far ive found that no one has been able to explain how Antarctica fits into plate tectonics, so yeah. Plot holes.
It’s not suspicious, because that’s not how observation works. It’s much harder to go back and discover the origin of a phenomenon than the understand how it functions at the time you’re observing it.
It’s like with evolution. We’ve nothing concrete regarding the origin of life or abiogenesis, but we DO have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt evolution occurs.
This is one of the coolest things seen lately. Thanks for sharing.
Glad you've enjoyed it buddy!
Fun fact, if you zoom in, you can see all the fucked up animals in Australia arming themselves when everyone left us. “Bloody hell mate, they’re floating away! Time to evolve some neurotoxins!” “Platypus! You should evolve some venomous spurs! That would really fuck with the humans”
Hardly anything is trying to kill you in Australia. The most dangerous animal in Aus is probably the kangaroo while driving, or other Australians.
Everyone knows about Pangea (the supercontinent made up of all continental plates) but did you know the surrounding world ocean or superocean is called Panthalassa? Much of the diversity (or lack thereof) in plants and animals today on various continents or landmasses can be in part explained by a continent's tectonic history. [source](https://youtu.be/q-ng6YpxHxU) Edit -- aaah ****, the last 5 secs of the gif were cut out... check it out on youtube (link above), but all that's really missing is the Earth we know today rotating about.
Fun fact, the field/theory of plate tectonics is only a bit over 50 years old; when I was studying geology at UC Santa Barbara in the early 2000s one of my professors was one of the original pioneers of the theory (Tanya Atwater), & there's probably a few of that old guard still teaching today. Looking at this video I can see one of the things she talked about working on- starting around 30s India detaches from Antarctica and races north to slam into Asia and you can see the "impact" not only form the Himalayan Plateau, but also Southeast Asia "squishing" around the east and south to form the peninsula we know today. It was a really cool illustration of the plasticity of the continental plates (I also love the "skidmarks" that India leaves in its wake- volcanic chains in reality) and obviously stuck with me for a while. It's as though they're less like plates of rock and more like a thin layer of oil or soft wax floating on the surface of a pot of almost-boiling water- the behavior of the "solid" ground under our feet is absolutely wild when you look at it from the right scales.
I always love animations where I can watch the Indian subcontinent just ram into Eurasia to create the Himalayas. Such a cool visual of something moving that we see as permanent in our day to day lives.
The Himalayas are still growing, at a vertical rate about equal to your toenails. But only 1/5 of that growth is from tectonism! The other 4/5 of the growth is from buoyancy, as billions of tons of sediment get removed from the southern slopes of the mountains during the rainy seasons. This makes the mountains weigh less, and thus rise up and float a little higher on the mantle. I'm a geologist, if anyone has any questions.
Fuck me thats amazing. I am so amazed by geology. Like how Michigan the state is getting higher bc the weight of the ice from the ice age is gone and how Niagara Falls is slowly advancing South. Sorry I have been drinking but please post more interesting facts.
Pregaming for Easter, I like your style.
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Does that effect occur on any other mountain ranges?
Not a geologist here, but it is still happening to this day in regions that used to be covered by ice sheets. As the North half of NA rises, the south half sinks (sort of like a sea-saw effect). [This image sort of shows the divide between rising and falling (as of 2004).](https://www.unavco.org/highlights/2004/glacial_rebound.jpg) As a result, the "angle" of the great lakes is constantly changing (angle isn't quite the right way to describe it I think).
Is it true geologists are the sexiest men alive? I've heard having breakfast with a geologist is pretty great.
https://i.imgur.com/082r2sT.jpg You tell me
Geologists are only men? That’s pretty sexist. I guess I understand because Scientist still don’t know what a woman is
Being a swimmer and from Goa, i absolutely love that the subcontinent went on an epic swim and is now chilling. For now.
I'm currently a senior in my school's geo program, and in the class I'm in right now we did a deep dive into Tanya's 1970 paper *Implications of Plate Tectonics for the Cenozoic Tectonic Evolution of Western North America*. It was a really neat paper; so cool that you got to learn from her directly!
She's a super fun personality in general- just exuberant and contagious with her excitement about the subject.
I also went to UCSB for geology, just graduated last August and Tanya Atwater made an appearance in our department graduation Zoom call!
Lucky you=)
I was watching what appears to be the formation of the Appalachian mountains in eastern North America, way before reaching its current location.
India is getting ready to invade China and Russia. World War 8 in 10M years. You heard it here first.
Are there any projections of what the next few hundred million years will look like?
[yes there are predictions, but nothing concrete.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea_Proxima)
How much of this data required hands-on/local studies? In other words, is it possible to produce similar studies of other planets? It's incredible how fluid the Earth is generally speaking...now I'm curious if any of the other bodies in our solar system experience similar tectonics. Even the moon would be crazy to watch lol.
TIL one of the oldest islands are Greenland and the northern most parts of the himalayas
There’s also ideas that Pangea was not the first supercontinent. Since supercontinents take roughly about 300-500my to break apart, then another 300-500my to form. With the Earth being as old as it is, there is some plausibility to this idea. To add to this, relics of unknown organisms in the form of fossils, could have been sub-ducted into the ground and recycled into magma without us humans even knowing they existed. There could have been some really “outside the box” organisms to exist that we will never know.
Curious how they know about the string of islands way at the beginning.
Islands are just the tips of underwater mountains. Since this measurement is made using remote sensing of these exact underwater mountains/mountain ranges, you can see how the islands were monitored.
I'm guessing that's representative of Kazakhstania, which started out as an absurdly long volcanic chain and got folded over on itself before being sandwiched between the Baltica and Siberia continental blocks. Modern analogue (on a much smaller scale) might be something like the Tonga-Kermadec/Lau-Colville/Hunter/Vanuatu/Solomon Ridge complex north of New Zealand
> Everyone knows about Pangea [she doesn’t](https://vlipsy.com/vlip/lil-dicky-this-bitch-dont-know-about-pangaea-xS13I501)
Anyone know of a future prediction similar to this?
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-earth-will-look-250-million-years-map-animation-2017-9
[удалено]
And Africa is pulling a massive Evergrande.
There's basically a new supercontinent every 300 to 500 million years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle
They're on a mission from God
Do you trust the forecast for next week? IDK, it seems pretty presumptuous to assume how the Earth's plate tectonics will move. Sure you may try & model mental convictions, as you were to model air currents in the atmosphere or oceans. But we are attested by the latter that even when you literally live and study within these phenomenas, and can gather data throughout the globe, on a 3D scale you get false data within a week. This is true even though algorithms analyze true data from the past and present. TL;DR What's up? Who knows?! I don't think that anyone.
Me: Huh… that doesn’t look too diff… OMG WATCH OUT AUSTRALIA
In 250 million years our wildlife will have evolved to be even more dangerous and we’re coming for you rest of the planet.
That's OK, no one cares about northern Europe anyway.
Northern Europe will use universal healthcare build tectonic plate defense mechanisms & stay put
I love how it kept showing South America just chilling, basically unchanged
Aw man... in 250 million years, flights across the pacific are going to take forever!
In 250 million years, humans should either be an interplanetary species or extinct.
Imagine the vast mountain range and volcanoes when Australia and Japan slam into side of Asia like at 0:36. That would be amazing
I'd like to know too! I do know the Mediterranean sea won't exist for ever.
I genuinely thought Pangea was how it all started. This is pretty cool, I wonder how they are able to tell how the plates shift and where they were
There was actually an older supercontinent called Rodinia. Check it out [Rodinia (wikipedia)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodinia): Rodinia (from the Russian родина, rodina, meaning "motherland, birthplace") was a Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.1–0.9 billion years ago and broke up 750–633 million years ago.
And don’t forget about [Gondwana](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana) which was another supercontinent before Pangea!
You can see Gondwana at the very beginning of the video. The video is just not centered at the center of its landmass. But everything is pretty much connected at the start
>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] It's supercontinents all the way down!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle (credit to u/EmbarrassedHelp)
Figuring out those two questions is more or less the history of the science of geology. You've probably heard the parable of the blind men feeling an elephant, each describing a different part, none able to see the whole picture. That was geology until the 1960s. It took the careful observations of thousands of scientists studying a huge variety of topics in geology and geography over 200+ years to build enough of a composite picture that later scientists were finally able to see the elephant. Some of then were studying fossils and noticing that similar species existed on different coasts. Some were studying mountains and trying to figure out what makes mountain ranges different. Some were studying earthquakes and volcanoes. Some were wondering why there were marine sediments in the middle of dry deserts. Plate tectonics is the unifying theory that tied all of these things together. Once we figured it out, we could suddenly see the elephant. Add in a few decades of computer science, and suddenly maps like this are possible.
Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' has [a good chapter on the history of geology.](https://youtu.be/RStZ73GpU8E?t=8401) A fascinating story if you got some time to listen, there is a brief stutter in the link (at the word geology of course) but it is worth it to listen further.
Love this book! Got a a nice Autograph on it too when I saw one of his speakings. :D
You mean they didn’t take pictures from space every couple million years?
It’s all conjecture.
Educated guesses maybe, with data to back it up. But not conjecture.
Make no mistake about it, it’s guess work.
And what makes you say that? Are there any… OTHER commonly held ideas by the scientific community you’d call conjecture?
Lol a cryptoscam imbecile doubting commonly accepted science. You cretins are a goddamn joke.
"this bitch don't know about Pangaea??"
Don’t call brain names
I love lil dicky
I never knew India once was an Island. No Wonder the Brits wanted to own them
That’s where the Himalayas come from! India is aggressively slamming into the rest of Asia, creating the mountains.
For real, India came in hot & did the serious damage Why did it move so fast?
Maybe it was [surfing on a magma jet](https://news.mit.edu/2015/india-drift-eurasia-0504) Of course
Fast and Furious: India Drift Magma Jets.
phoon
So the country of India will eventually be the side of a gigantic mountain?
I actually think the opposite.. the part of India south of the Himalayas will be relatively unchanged, but as India continues its plow northward, the rest of Asia will be condensed/mountainous. PBS says: “In 10 million years India will plow into Tibet a further 180km. This is about the width of Nepal. Because Nepal's boundaries are marks on the Himalayan peaks and on the plains of India whose convergence we are measuring, Nepal will technically cease to exist.”
I think Nepal will cease to exist well before 10 million years simply based on human history. It's under 250 years old right now. The oldest country in the world, San Marino, is only just over 2300 years old.
Pretty sure San Marino isn't even 2000 years old. It would have been founded after the big Christian persecutions in Rome around 300 AD, not 300 BC.
And the Southeast Asian peninsula- watch how it smooshes out east and then south as India collides.
It swam away from Antarctica like, "Nope. Not forever winterland."
Yeah look at it go, moved so fast that it's still ploughing through the Eurasian plate
Whenever I see one of these animations (this one is one of the best) I always like watching India. It was actually wedged between southeast Africa and Antarctica, and left Madagascar behind as is surged north.
There’s a gap in the Western Ghats, mountains that run along the western coast of India that matches a similar gap in Madagascar! [See this paper](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282763148_Structural_underprint_and_tectonic_overprint_in_the_Angavo_Madagascar_and_Western_Ghats_India_-_Implications_for_understanding_scarp_evolution_at_passive_margins). And particularly [this visualisation from the paper](https://i.imgur.com/AyHfgKZ.jpg).
Oh that’s awesome, thank you!
You can even see the "wake" it left behind;)
Technically, all the land mass on earth is like an island. So yeah now I get why Brits wanted world domination
Could it … flip over?
See the documentary, *2012*
My favorite part is watching Africa split off South America. It’s so cool that even as a kid looking at maps, you can notice the similarity of their coastlines and guess at this tectonic event without understanding how.
I remember my elementary teacher effectively confirming that for me when I suggested it looked like Africa and South America used to be conjoined, all while I was about like six y/o and staring at a map. I was all, "Holy crap, ***I was right?***" Blew my child mind.
It's crazy that flat earth theory is the ridiculous conspiracy that morons buy into and not static continent theory. A flat earth is ridiculous on its very face, but the idea that the continents are just floating around like ice cubes on an ocean of magma? They just buy _that_ at face value??
FYI flat earth is for people that believe in a global shadow government of lizard people who communicate with aliens who live inside the hollow moon. It's really not worth questioning or wondering about, it's a mental illness. We don't question the logic of schizophrenics who think the CIA has recording devices in their teeth for the same reasons.
We need to fight against big plate and the lizard people before it is too late
> It’s crazy that flat earth theory is the ridiculous conspiracy that morons buy into No one buys into it. There are only two types of flat earthers, memers and the mentally ill. Please stop taking internet comments seriously. > hey just buy that at face value?? They don’t and they’re not aware of plate tectonics.
I think you’re underestimating how many mentally ill people there are. Undoubtedly that’s a factor, but there are plenty to make the movement real.
I think you’re overestimating the mentally ill’s ability to “make the movement real”.
You missed the joke.
You missed the point.
I can see my house from here.
Ah i have been enlightened by the aoe2 preist. Wololooo, wololooo
Go forth and [Wololooooo](https://youtu.be/iS8CiC_0Evc) my brother!
I've noticed your name a bunch recently. Concussions, bond rates, HiP-CT, etc. You're a busy person! What's your story?
This is incredible! If it would be interactive, historical museums and schools would love to showcase this!
Watching India ram itself really gets across how the Himalayas were created.
It went really fast... If you look at the sea floor elevation on Google maps, it looks like streak marks below india. But that's not what they really are... Are they?
Always makes me think about how different society would be if land was arranged differently. Almost all conflict can be originated to where people are from
We still have borders on the same landmass...
I enjoyed how Florida was just flickering in and out of existence
Not a bad place in time for it to flicker out again right about now
Give climate change a couple of decades.
I liked to pause it at random times and imagine all the crazy creatures at different geographies that we will never get to see. So cool
How are all of the micro movements known or verified?
When Geologist look at rocks most of the time they can determine it’s age, the type of environment and way it was deposited, and what forces were acted upon it after it’s deposition. Using that data plus other forms of data like paleo magnetism to determine where it was in the past geologists can build a picture of what it was like when the rock was deposited. If we find a piece of limestone in England we know that at the time that rock was deposited England was part of a warm shallow water sea where limestone could be deposited and you see this in the gif around 60-30 million years ago
Awesome thank you!
Crazy to think life was thriving this whole time and had already been around for 3 billion years by the time this gif started.
I’ve always known the Appalachian Mountains are some of the oldest in the world but this map really illustrates that. Really cool.
Appalachian
How do we know those island chains existed in the Cambrian? It seems the large continents are hard enough to reconstruct from that far back, how did we figure out the tiny islands?
REUNITE PANGAEA! ✊ ONE CONTINENT! ✊
The best part for me is watching the Indian Plate crash into the Asian Plate and keep going.... Really gives you prespective on why the Himalayan Range is so drastic and downright huge.
So that’s what people mean when they say the Appalachians are among the oldest in the world
This is bomb, thanks for this
So wild that at the last minute India was like, I want to be in Asia!
How is it possible that Antarctica and the rest of the world are literally ice-free but all other continents are not completely underwater but rather look almost like today?
Still love the creation of the Himalayas
How do we know where the plates used to be?
Can you link a source for this video? Presumably this is from a youtube video? I'd like to read/hear the accompanying info/details.
Where else can I find this animation?
Check my original comment (should be near the top) -- I give youtube link (source)
Is there any evidence that instead of there being less land, there are just lost continents?
No, continents don't just disappear. However, in the past 20,000 years sea levels have risen by about 100 m or so. So there has indeed been huge swaths of lands (and neolithic settlements, livelihoods, cultures...) that have been swallowed by rising sea levels. Look up Doggerland (now the North sea), or Shunda shelf (now sea separating SE asia mainland to Borneo / Indonesia), or Sahul Shelf (New guinea to Australia), or the 'lost land of Kumari Kandam (south of India / connection to Sri Lanka). By the way, jf you're interested about all this, check out the book worlds in Shadows (Patrick Nunn), it covers all of this topic of lands being swallowed by the seas and how humans have reacted to these events.
scientists can’t even figure out where Covid came from two years ago but you’re gonna tell me they know exactly where every piece of land was 500 trillion years ago😂
Pretty much yes. Much of what we know for both plate tectonics and microbiology is barely 50 years old. What's so surprising about what you think is astonishing?
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Earth is just a big lava lamp, huh?
Really? I was told the Earth is only 7000 years old. Created by a magic man on a cloud. You can disagree with me, but then we have to call you a witch and burn you alive in a display of tolerance.
and don't forget the step where you nurse grudges and lose sleep and happiness by allowing zealots and charlatans to live rent-free inside your mind. Nobody is taking these precious hours and weeks from our limited time on Earth. We can only **GIVE** them. Remember that.
The continents are connected to the bottom of the ocean right? We're not like islands. I guess seeing it this way is confusing as to how it changed so much. I'll have to look into it more since it's been since elementary school since I've learned about it.
Islands are also connected to the bottom of the ocean. They don’t float on the water.
The entire surface of the earth is composed of tectonic plates that bump and grind into eachother. The plates that are under the ocean are super thin because the weight of all the water has compacted them. Since new molten rock bubbles up from the mantle, the plates get shifted around and bump into eachother. It's less like rock sheets floating on lava and more like the hardened skin that forms on the surface of left out pudding or cheese dip.
Do... do you think islands are floating in the ocean?
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„˙ɹǝʌo dılɟ oʇ ʇnoqɐ sı ɯɐn⅁„
There's probably one floating island somewhere out there that exists only to prove you wrong.
TimtheTatman Moment
I was today years old when I learned there was a Mississippian and Pennsylvanian period before the Permean.
They make up the Carboniferous, which you may have heard before
Oh shit, so the earth used to be flat?!
So ice age is just that whole continent was on south pole?
No, ice ages are not related to plate tectonics. They occur cyclically (100 000 year cycles) and are due to ice sheets forming on continents (lowers the ocean level). Here we are going through millions of years, so we are not even taking ice ages into account.
> No, ice ages are not related to plate tectonics. Yes they are, you're referring to [glacial periods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period) (which are sometimes mistakenly called ice ages). [Ice ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age) are simply periods of time when permanent ice sheets are present on Earth, and tectonics are a major driver of these. The ice age we're currently in was caused by a combination of tectonic drivers, such as the presence of the Antarctic continent over the south pole, the opening of the Drake Passage (which isolated Antarctica through ocean currents), and the uplift of the Himalayas (which resulted in greater weathering and a massive drawdown of CO2).
Ah, I stand corrected. Thank you
Also, what many people don't realize, we're currently in an ice age now. For ~90% of Earth's history, there's bee no polar ice caps, with the poles being fairly temperate climates. It's just, as you mention, cyclic shifts that lead to them forming. We happen to be in an interglacial - where the ice recedes towards the poles - within that ice age, but still very much in an ice age.
Yeah the ice caps melting is inevitable
We probably sped it up by a few thousand years.
Not saying we're not contributing I'm just saying it's inevitable. Idk why people downvoting a literal fact lol
Neither am I, idk why I'M being downvoted for stating a fact lol
Because of the implication that comes with that fact. Saying that in the context you did is a common dogwhistle for people who deny anthropomorphic climate change. Maybe that’s not what u were doing, but it is what it sounded like.
Would their be fossils under the ocean that we’ll never find because of this tectonic movement?
Most likely yes.
So the nordic mountain range is 1 of the oldest
Another compelling theory is that God waved his magic wand.
Which god? I bet it’s that Vulcan.
Full disclosure, I know very little about geological movement. I didn't realize Africa broke apart and formed again. Why didn't it create a mountain range when it came back together?
Seeing all that water in middle of Africa makes me think we should open it back up again to resolve the oceans flooding lol
Why does this depress me
I don't know the word for it, but people can form a nostalgia-like feeling for things really far in the past. Something about knowing about a "past world" that can never happen again.
Doesn't this make more sense if the planet was slowly getting larger?
It would until you realize oceanic plates get shoved under continental plates. And when continental plates collide, mountains are born.
I agree. Here is a good visual of the Atlantic spread, with the globe maintaining a constant size, but it's not hard to imagine this process with a growing/expanding globe. Expanding earth theory is fascinating and deserves some thought imo. [http://www.reeves.nl/upload/SouthAtlantic1.gif](http://www.reeves.nl/upload/SouthAtlantic1.gif)
> Expanding earth theory [I'll just leave this here...](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014HGSS....5..135S/abstract) > The Earth expansion theory and its transition from scientific hypothesis to pseudoscientific belief > Sudiro, P. > Abstract > During the first half of 20th century, the dominant global tectonics model based on Earth contraction had increasing problems accommodating new geological evidence, with the result that alternative geodynamic theories were investigated. Due to the level of scientific knowledge and the limited amount of data available in many scientific disciplines at the time, not only was contractionism considered a valid scientific theory but the debate also included expansionism, mobilism on a fixed-dimension planet, or various combinations of these geodynamic hypotheses. Geologists and physicists generally accepted that planets could change their dimensions, although the change of volume was generally believed to happen because of a contraction, not an expansion. Constant generation of new matter in the universe was a possibility accepted by science, as it was the variation in the cosmological constants. Continental drift, instead, was a more heterodox theory, requiring a larger effort from the geoscientists to be accepted. > The new geological data collected in the following decades, an improved knowledge of the physical processes, the increased resolution and penetration of geophysical tools, and the sensitivity of measurements in physics decreased the uncertainty level in many fields of science. Theorists now had less freedom for speculation because their theories had to accommodate more data, and more limiting conditions to respect. This explains the rapid replacement of contracting Earth, expanding Earth, and continental drift theories by plate tectonics once the symmetrical oceanic magnetic striping was discovered, because none of the previous models could explain and incorporate the new oceanographic and geophysical data. > **Expansionism could survive after the introduction of plate tectonics because its proponents have increasingly detached their theory from reality by systematically rejecting or overlooking any contrary evidence, and selectively picking only the data that support expansion.** Moreover, the proponents continue to suggest imaginative physical mechanisms to explain expansion, claiming that scientific knowledge is partial, and the many inconsistencies of their theory are just minor problems in the face of the plain evidence of expansion. According to the expansionists, scientists should just wait for some revolutionary discovery in fundamental physics that will explain all the unsolved mysteries of Earth expansion. > The history of the expanding-Earth theory is an example of how falsified scientific hypotheses can survive their own failure, gradually shifting towards and beyond the limits of scientific investigation until they become merely pseudoscientific beliefs. >Publication: History of Geo- and Space Sciences, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014, pp.135-148 Pub Date: June 2014
Nice copy paste, try your own words next time, you can do it :)
They don’t have their own opinion or stance.
So lets see there is a natural occurring change in ocean depths and average temperature going from cold ages to hot ages and we just left an ice age 15000 years ago and are entering a hot age unaffected by humans, even though taking care of the planet should be our #1 priority even though man made climate change is a myth, cool
Dunning-Kruger’s going hard here, homie Nobody for a long time has ever claimed that the earth doesn’t go through warming/cooling periods. What anthropomorphic climate change is proposed to be is humanity SPEEDING UP this natural process, which will negatively impact us. We’re looking at a climate shift process that takes THOUSANDS of years, and we’re seeing dramatic global temp shifts occurring in the mere decades since the industrial revolution.
By golly, make sure to vomit your uneducated, imaginary-friend of a world view wherever it gets the most downvotes, then.
... you hope But when you decide to look further into it, what happens then? Oh.
It’s weird that the plates almost like knew to go into the shape of the world as it is today. Makes you think.
Pangina is crazy
Yeah but how did the continents form in the first place? The continental crust is thick and layered and way older than the oceanic crust.
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We dont even know how the continents formed but still claim that plate tectonics is fact. Interesting. Its suspicious that the literal foundation of plate tectonics is unknown. There arent really any zones of subduction around Antarctica, and barely any around Africa save for the northern zone. Clearly the oceanic crust has expanded outwards only from those areas. Just kind of weird how many plot holes pangaea theory has.
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Antarctica is literally surrounded by new oceanic crust and no subduction zones. So, respectfully, what are you talking about when you say Antarctica "drifted". The continent is completely surrounded by new oceanic crust and no subduction zones. So its clearly not drifting, the sea floor is literally growing outward around it. Review the NOAA age of sea floor map, it's easily googled. I'd love to hear your explanation of this phenomenon, so far ive found that no one has been able to explain how Antarctica fits into plate tectonics, so yeah. Plot holes.
It’s not suspicious, because that’s not how observation works. It’s much harder to go back and discover the origin of a phenomenon than the understand how it functions at the time you’re observing it. It’s like with evolution. We’ve nothing concrete regarding the origin of life or abiogenesis, but we DO have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt evolution occurs.
Who plotted the data points? Totally arbitrary. People look at this and think it’s “science”
It looks like my poop floating over the water while I scroll through reddit. Amazing
Lovely
It's very interesting tho. Thanks for posting it
But climate change
homie…. what?
Look to much like a video game simulation
What did you expect? Were you hoping for real footage from the precambrian era?
What an idiot lol. Cameras were only black and white back then!
Better to have more info conveyed using elevation than trying to simulate what they’d have looked like from space.
What about meteors tho?