The Next Pangea: What Earth’s Future Supercontinent Will Look Like

Pangea wasn’t the first, and it won’t be the last. Take a look ahead at the shape of the world to come.

By Jack Feerick
Oct 25, 2020 11:00 AMOct 26, 2020 4:01 PM
the next pangea four options - University of Lisbon, Portugal
(Credit: Hannah S. Davies/Lisbon University, Portugal)

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Unfathomable ages ago, the continents of the Earth were not in their current places. A single enormous landmass dominated the globe, a supercontinent retroactively called Pangea (or Pangaea, if you prefer; either way, it's Greek for “all Earth”). Through a long and infinitesimally slow process of fracturing and continental drift, we ended up with our familiar seven continents. 

That’s the story as you probably learned it — but it’s not the whole story. From our human viewpoint, the current world map seems a fait accompli. But plate tectonics is a continuous process; even now we are undergoing long-term changes whose progress we cannot perceive — a cycle that plays out over hundreds of millions of years. There were supercontinents before Pangea; and unfathomable ages hence, there will likely be others.

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