Animation fun!

The animation to the left is a simulation of what scientists say will happen to our continents. They say our continents will shift and "morph" into each other 250 million years from now into a Pangaea Ultima. Of course, no one can really predict exactly what our continents will look like and what will happen to them, but it's a good guess as to what will happen because of the continually shifting plates. What we've been talking about in class is that the reason plates move is because what we think are convection zones of magma under the plates. These convection currents don't necessarily rotate in the same direction, so it makes sense that the continents would move in different directions.

This is how scientists think the continents shifted to their current locations from Pangaea. This is because of, once again, the shifting plates. Evidence for this is the fossils found on the different continents. There are fossils found in the USA that have the same composition and are the same type that can also be found in Europe. The only explanation was that the continents were once together.




http://library.thinkquest.org/17701/high/pangaea/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast06oct_1/