Amasia, het toekomstige supercontinent

Binnen enkele miljoe­nen jaren ontstaat er een nieuw super­continent: Ama­sia. Dat staat te lezen in Sci­ence. Aartsvi­jan­den Rus­land en de Verenigde Stat­en zullen aldus met elka­ar ver­bon­den waren. In het verleden waren er al eerdere super­con­ti­nen­ten: Pan­gaea, Rodinia en Nuna.

Over the next few hun­dred mil­lion years, the Arc­tic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea will dis­ap­pear, and Asia will crash into the Amer­i­c­as form­ing a super­con­ti­nent that will stretch across much of the North­ern Hemi­sphere. That’s the con­clu­sion of a new analy­sis of the move­ments of these giant land­mass­es.

Unlike in today’s world, where a vari­ety of tec­ton­ic plates move across Earth’s sur­face car­ry­ing the bits of crust that we rec­og­nize as con­ti­nents, ancient Earth was home to super­con­ti­nents, which com­bined most if not all major land­mass­es into one. Pre­vi­ous stud­ies sug­gest that super­con­ti­nents last about 100 mil­lion years or so before they break apart, set­ting the pieces adrift to start anoth­er cycle.