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The newer model has Australia and Antarctica between South America and southeast Asia, south of the Medi-Pangaean Sea. Pangaea Proxima (also called Pangaea Ultima, Neopangaea, and Pangaea II) is a possible future supercontinent configuration. Consistent with the supercontinent cycle, Pangaea
Pangaea's predecessor Gondwana is not considered a supercontinent under the first definition since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia and Siberia were separate at the time. [7] A future supercontinent, termed Pangaea Proxima, is hypothesized to form within the next 250 million years. [8]
Map of Pangaea with modern continental outlines. The supercontinent cycle is the quasi-periodic aggregation and dispersal of Earth's continental crust.There are varying opinions as to whether the amount of continental crust is increasing, decreasing, or staying about the same, but it is agreed that the Earth's crust is constantly being reconfigured.
Pangaea was C-shaped, with the bulk of its mass stretching between Earth's northern and southern polar regions and surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa and the Paleo-Tethys and subsequent Tethys Oceans. Pangaea is the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.
Arc magmas account for more than 20% of terrestrially produced magmas [2] and are produced by the dehydration of minerals within the subducting slab as it descends into the mantle and are accreted onto the base of the overriding continental plate. [3] Subduction zones host a unique variety of rock types formed by the high-pressure, low ...
Geologic processes, such as weathering, erosion, water drainage, and the subduction of the continental plates, all play a role in this recycling of materials. Because geology and chemistry have major roles in the study of this process, the recycling of inorganic matter between living organisms and their environment is called a biogeochemical cycle.
The change from a spreading plate boundary to a subduction plate boundary may result from rapid rearrangement of relative plate motion. A transform fault may also become a subduction zone, with the side with the higher, hotter, thinner lithosphere riding over the lower, colder lithosphere. This mechanism would lead to obduction of ophiolite ...
According to the extroversion model first developed by Paul F. Hoffman, subduction ceases in the Pacific Ocean Basin. [71] [77] 400–500 million The supercontinent (Pangaea Proxima, Novopangaea, Amasia, or Aurica) will likely have rifted apart. [71] This will likely result in higher global temperatures, similar to the Cretaceous period. [73]