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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]
The model builds on the concept of continental drift, an idea developed during the first decades of the 20th century. Plate tectonics came to be accepted by geoscientists after seafloor spreading was validated in the mid-to-late 1960s. The processes that result in plates and shape Earth's crust are called tectonics. Tectonic plates also occur ...
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.
Continental fragments and microcontinent crustal compositions are very similar to those of regular continental crust.The rifting process that caused the continental fragments to form most likely impacts their layers and overall thickness along with the addition of mafic intrusions to the crust.
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.
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]
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 ...