An international team of geoscientists led by the University of Sydney (Australia) has published a video that shows for the first time the uninterrupted movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates during the last 1 billion years. It is one of the most complete models of tectonic plate movements ever carried out.
As they move, tectonic plates affect weather, tidal patterns, animal movements and evolution, volcanic activity, metal production, and much more; in fact, it affects everything that lives on the surface.
The continents have been everywhere
Antarctica, so cold and inhospitable today, was at one point in history quite a desirable place to live , but the movement of land masses has shaped the Earth we live on today. So understanding these movements and patterns is crucial if scientists want to predict how habitable our planet will be in the future.
According to experts, our planet is incredibly dynamic.
How were these plates first formed? When did they originate? These questions are still unanswered, but each new set of data helps us understand the ancient history of the Earth, even taking into account the missing information in some models.
“Our team has created a completely new model of the evolution of the Earth over the last billion years,” says geoscientist Dietmar Müller, co-author of the work. “Our planet is unique in the way it supports life. But this is only possible because geological processes, such as plate tectonics, provide a planetary life support system.”
Watch the video of the oceans opening and closing, the continents scattering and periodically recombining to form huge supercontinents in this 1 billion-year tectonic dance.
Referencia: Extending full-plate tectonic models into deep time: Linking the Neoproterozoic and the Phanerozoic. Earth-Science Reviews Volume 214, March 2021, 103477 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103477
