The tectonic plates that cover the Earth like a puzzle move as fast as nails grow, but over a billion years it is enough to travel around the planet, as a fascinating new video shows.
In one of the most complete models of tectonic plate movements ever assembled, scientists have condensed a billion years of motion into a 40-second video clip, so we can see how these giant slabs of rock have interacted 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, which includes all limits,” geoscientist Michael Tetley, who completed his PhD at the University of Sydney, told Euronews.
“On a human scale, things move in centimeters a year, but as we can see from the animation, the continents have been everywhere in time. A place like Antarctica that today we see as an inhospitable cold place and ice cream was actually once quite a good holiday destination in the equator. “
The movement and sliding of the plates is quite visible if you watch the video: the land masses close to neighbors become distant cousins and vice versa, and you will be surprised by the recentness that countries and continents settled 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 metallic resources we need to ensure a clean energy future.
The movement of the plates is estimated by studying the geological record: the magnetism that provides data on the historical positions of the substrates with respect to the Earth’s axis of rotation and the types of material trapped in rock samples that help match the pieces of the past geological plate puzzles.
Here the team put a lot of effort into choosing and combining the most suitable models available today, looking at both the movements of the continents and the interactions along the boundaries of the plates.
“Planet Earth is incredibly dynamic, with a surface made up of plates that constantly converge in a unique way between known rocky planets,” says geoscientist Sabin Zahirovic of the University of Sydney.
“These plates move at the speed of nail growth, but when they condense a billion years in 40 seconds a fascinating dance is revealed. The oceans open and close, the continents disperse and recombine periodically to to form immense supercontinents “.
The more scientists go into the past, the harder it is to estimate how the plates have moved, and in this case, the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian epochs (1,000 to 520 million years ago) were carefully traced and aligned because match the modern records we have.
Questions remain about how these plates were first formed and when this formation occurred, but each new data point helps us understand the ancient history of the Earth, even taking into account the missing plates in some models. .
Scientists admit that their work lacks some finer details, spread like the rest of the planet and a billion years, but hope it can act as a useful resource and foundation for the future study of these movements and the impact they have on the rest of the planet.
“Our team has created a completely new model of Earth’s evolution over the last billion years,” says geoscientist Dietmar Müller of the University of Sydney.
“Our planet is unique for hosting life. But this is only possible because geological processes, such as plate tectonics, provide a planetary life support system.”
The research has been published in Earth science reviews.