Latest Supercontinents Stories
Princeton University scientists have shown that, in ancient times, the Earth's magnetic field was structured like the two-pole model of today, suggesting that the methods geoscientists use to reconstruct the geography of early land masses on the globe are accurate. The findings may lead to a better understanding of historical continental movement, which relates to changes in climate.By taking a closer look at the 1.1 billion-year-old volcanic rocks on the north shore of Lake Superior, the...
Two giant plumes of hot rock deep within the earth are linked to the plate motions that shape the continents, researchers have found.The two superplumes, one beneath Hawaii and the other beneath Africa, have likely existed for at least 200 million years, explained Wendy Panero, assistant professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.The giant plumes -- or "superpiles" as Panero calls them -- rise from the bottom of Earth's mantle, just above our planet's core. Each is larger...
By Zhu, Wenbin Zhang, Zhiyong; Shu, Liangshu; Lu, Huafu; Su, Jinbao; Yang, Wei Mafic dykes are observed in the Korla region along the northern Tarim Block, NW China. Our sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe U-Pb zircon ages, the first determined for these dykes, indicate that the mafic dykes were mainly formed at 650-630 Ma, and thus document the youngest known igneous activity associated with rifting in the Tarim Block during the Neoproterozoic. Combined with previous geochronological...
By Steve Kuchera, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn. Aug. 7--IT DOESN'T LOOK EXTRAORDINARY -- but a rock found in Antarctica by a University of Minnesota Duluth professor is helping researchers reconstruct what a supercontinent that existed a billion years ago looked like. Analysis of the chunk of granite collected by UMD geology professor John Goodge in 2005 indicate that part of Antarctica and North America were joined 1.4 billion years ago. "We got really lucky -- I had no idea what we were...
A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago.Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian investigators describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together...
In a paper published in this month's "˜Geophysical Journal International', Dr Graeme Eagles from the Earth Sciences Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, reveals how one of the largest continents ever to exist met its demise.Gondwana was a "˜supercontinent' that existed between 500 and 180 million years ago. For the past four decades, geologists have debated how Gondwana eventually broke up, developing a multitude of scenarios which can be loosely grouped into two schools of...
Like pieces in a giant jigsaw puzzle, continents have split, drifted and merged again many times throughout Earth's history, but geologists haven't understood the mechanism behind the moves. A new study now offers evidence that continents sometimes break along preexisting lines of weakness created when small chunks of land attach to a larger continent. The paper - the cover story in the latest issue of Geology, the journal of the Geological Society of America - is the first to provide an...
Latest Supercontinents Reference Libraries
North America is a continent completely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost completely within the Western Hemisphere. It’s also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It’s bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. This continent covers an area of approximately 9,540,000 sq miles, about 4.8 percent of the plants surface or about...
The Paleoproterozoic is the first of three subdivisions of the Proterozoic Eon (occurring from 2.5 billion to 1.6 billion years ago (Ga). This period is marked by the first stabilization of the continents, and also when cyanobacteria--a type of bacteria that uses biochemical processes of photosynthesis to produce oxygen--evolved. Experts have found paleontological evidence that during at least part of the Paleoproterozoic era, about 1.8 Ga, the earth year was about 450 days long, with days...
The Archean (formerly Archaeozoic) is a geologic eon between the Hadean and Proterozoic eons. The Archean Eon begins at roughly 3.8 billion years ago (Ga) and ends at about 2.5 Ga. But unlike all other geological ages, which are based on stratigraphy, The Archean eon is defined chronometrically. The lower boundary of 3.8 Ga has also not been officially recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The name Archean is derived from the ancient Greek (Arkhe), meaning...
