New Supercontinent Amasia will Form at the North Pole
A few hundred million years from now the Earth will have a vastly different geography. A new prediction for the future sees the Americas and Asia fusing together at the north to form one supercontinent called Amasia.
Geologists at Yale University have predicted where the shifting continents of the planet will eventually end up in a hundred million years. Along with the Americas and Asia, Africa and Australia will eventually join the supercontinent Amasia. If this scenario plays out it won't be the first time the continents came together to form a supercontinent. About 300 million years ago the seven continents came together to form the supercontinent Pangaea.
The land masses of the Earth are constantly moving around because of tectonic activity. The continents are actually floating on the Earth's mantle. Even though humans may not feel it, the continents shift into strange combinations. Geologists believe that continents have formed supercontinents periodically including the hypothesized supercontinents of Nuna 1.8 billion years ago, Rodinia a billion years ago and then more recently Pangea 300 million years ago.
The geologists have predicted that Amasia will form over the Arctic Ocean. They analyzed the magnetic data in rocks around the world which points out where the rocks have been in past ages.
"Ancient rocks when they form, whether it's lava cooling or sedimentary rock solidifying, will lock in the magnetic orientation," said Ross Nelson Mitchell, a geologist at Yale University. "But while this indicates latitude very accurately, historically we haven't had indicators of longitude.
"We found that after each historical supercontinent had assembled, this whole supercontinent would undergo a series of back-and-forth rotations about a stable axis on the equator."
This discovery led the researchers to believe that each supercontinent forms about 90 degrees away from its predecessor. Amasia would form after North and South America fuse together to close the Caribbean Sea and meet Eurasia at the North Pole. Australia will move north and join Asia somewhere between India and Japan.
The theory is published in the current issue of the journal Nature.