The tectonic plates that cover the Earth like a jigsaw puzzle move as fast as our fingernails grow, but over the course of a billion years, that’s enough to travel the entire planet – as a fascinating new video shows.
In one of the most complete models of plate tectonic motion ever put together, scientists condensed a billion years of motion into a 40-second video clip so that we can see how these giant plates interact over time.
As they move, the plates affect the climate, tidal patterns, animal movements and their evolution, volcanic activity, metal production and more: they are more than just a cover for the planet, they are a life support system that affects everything that lives on the surface.
“For the first time, a complete model of tectonics has been built, including all boundaries,” geoscientist Michael Tetley, who completed his PhD at the University of Sydney, told Euronews.
“On a human time scale, things move in centimeters per year, but as we can see from the animation, the continents have been everywhere in time. A place like Antarctica that we see today as a cold, icy, inhospitable place was actually once. a great holiday destination on the equator. “
Moving and sliding the plates is quite a sight when you watch the video – landmasses that are close neighbors become distant cousins and vice versa, and you may be surprised how recently the countries and continents settled in the positions we know today.
Understanding these movements and patterns is crucial if scientists are to predict how habitable our planet will be in the future and where we will find the metal resources we need to ensure a clean energy future.
The movement of the plates is estimated by the study of the geological record – the magnetism that provides data about the historical positions of substrates with respect to the Earth’s axis of rotation and the types of material trapped in rock samples that help extract the pieces of geological plate puzzles from it. past together.
Here, the team went to great lengths to choose and combine the most suitable models currently available, looking at both the movements of the continents and the interactions along plate boundaries.
“Planet Earth is incredibly dynamic, with a surface made up of plates that are constantly displacing each other in a way that is unique among the known rocky planets,” said geoscientist Sabin Zahirovic of the University of Sydney.
“These plates move at the rate at which fingernails grow, but when a billion years are condensed in 40 seconds, an enchanting dance is revealed. Oceans open and close, continents spread and recombine periodically to form immense supercontinents.”
The farther scientists go into the past, the more difficult it becomes to estimate how plates have moved, and in this case, in particular, the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian (1,000 to 520 million years ago) eras were carefully mapped and reconciled, the more modern records we have.
Questions remain about how these plates were first formed and when this formation took place, but each new data point helps us understand Earth’s ancient history – even considering missing plates in some models.
The scientists admit that their work lacks some finer details – sprawling as it is across the planet and a billion years – but they hope it can serve as a useful resource and basis for the future study of these movements and the impact they have. to have. have on everything else on the planet.
“Over the past billion years, our team has been creating a whole new model of Earth’s evolution,” said University of Sydney geoscientist Dietmar Müller.
“Our planet is unique in the way it hosts life. But this is only possible because geological processes, such as plate tectonics, provide a planetary life support system.”
The research is published in Earth-Science Reviews.