11 October 2017
The next supercontinent: Four ways Earth could reshape itself
Plate tectonics is a slow-grind drama with some dramatic plot twists – these scenarios show how Earth might look in 250 million AD
By Stephen Battersby
ASIA is torn in two. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are swallowed. Where once there were beaches, great mountain ranges judder into the skies, fusing together a scatter of separate land masses into one mighty new supercontinent. Call it… Aurica.
That’s what João Duarte calls it, anyway. A geoscientist at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, he has his own distinct vision of how Earth may look 250 million years from now. He joins a band of fortune tellers gazing into the distant future, all with different ideas about how and where the next supercontinent will form, and what cataclysms might strike along the way.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631470-700-the-next-supercontinent-four-ways-earth-could-reshape-itself/
