As geologist, I’m certainly aware that in understanding “time” I have a broad view of the past, present, and future. One that makes the field of geology interesting is the ability to tell the history based on what we see today. With regard to tectonic studies, I understand that the earth is a mobile planet that has been and will continue to change all the time.
Paleogeology, paleogeography, and historical geology are some branches of sciences that study the conditions of the earth in the past. According to the hypothesis of Alfred L. Wegener, at first the earth only had one very large land area called the Pangea supercontinent. In fact, many other scientists also think like Wegener, as in 1620, Sir Francis Bacon had observed the coastline similarity of the South America and West Africa, then in 1855, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini had introduced a sketch showing the two continents united. And it was only in 1912, Alfred L. Wegener put forward the concept of Continental Drift which was very controversial and was rejected by several other scientists. At present we know that land on Earth has been fragmented into several continents, where the northern parts of the Earth are North America, Green Land, Europe, Asia continent while the southern parts of the Earth are South America, Antarctica, Africa, Madagascar, India, and Australia continent. The earth is constantly changing, from one land to several separate lands. Then the question arises, will in the future be formed again a super land like Pangea?
The question is indeed not an easy one, because it is related to the future that we don’t know for sure. But a scientist, put forward the answer “yes”, according to Christopher R. Scotese, an expert on geology and paleogeography from the University of Texas at Arlington, he believes that continents to be reunited to a single land called Pangea Ultima or Pangea Proxima.
Pangea Ultima itself is estimated to be formed in 260 million years to come, now we can see that the Indian continent has crashed into the Asian Continent forming the Hilmalaya Mountains, the African Continent has moved towards the European Continent, the North American and South American Continents will be united, and finally the Antarctica Continent will move south crashing into the Australian Continent. As a result, all continents will reunite to form a ring with the sea inside.
