The earth’s north pole won’t always be an iced over ocean and I don’t mean (just) because of climate change. We’re talking Pangea II here and in geological time, it’s not even that far off. At least that’s what some secular scientists at an elite east coast university claim:
(TG Daily) — Geologists at Yale University have developed a radical new theory of the formation of continents, and predict the creation of a new supercontinent, dubbed Amasia, over the North Pole during the next 50 to 200 million years.
That’s a mere 500 years or less in young-earth creationist time, and the first signs the end is nigh will appear much sooner. Better firm up those dream over seas vacation plans fast! First to disappear will be the US Gulf Coast as the north shore of South America slides into the US, squeezing the Caribbean out of existence. Then Eurasia skids east and compresses the Atlantic out of being, as both the American and Eurasian super-mass slide toward a super continental polar rendezvous. I guess that leaves Australia and Antarctica pretty much on their own way down under.
Amasia is the proposed name of the new continent, as rendered in futuristic broad-band digitalese spoken by the AI-human hybrids, or the shrieks and grunts of post apocalyptic zombie descendants, inhabiting the far future. Or maybe our distant relatives will live out their pampered lives on a sort of super-duper Star Trek nexgen holodeck and not give a shit about anything in the real world? We all know we’d never leave the holodeck if one existed …
Anyway, does this purported Amasia even qualify as a super continent? The original Pangea included what would become Antarctica and Australia and was centered roughly on the south pole. It slid northward, rotating, and then broke up east to west. See below and check out the Indian peninsula hauling ass across the Pacific and smashing into southeast Asia. Now the Himalaya’s make sense!
On location and formation, there’s a theory among paleo-geologists that one of the places super continents tend to form at is 180 degrees from where the last super continent formed and stood. Combined with the existing observed motion of the main tectonic plates, geologists feel the north pole is a decent inference for the future. Hence the location of Pangea mark two, AKA Amasia, to the north. On the other point, it seems reasonable there could have been large islands and maybe even island continents around during the reign of the first Pangea, so maybe an Amasia leaving Antartica and Australia behind qualifies, too. Maybe a geologist could weigh in, but shooting from the hip, if those island/continents got subducted beneath present day continental plates or eroded away it would be mighty difficult to infer they ever existed.
More importantly, wtf is up with mangling God fear’n North America with some Asian based nomenclature? I personally liked the name Borean Tundra, but alas, it’s been taken by a continent of sorts. But Amasia? Leave it to Godless scientists: if Amasia is not an insidious terrorist communist plot to infiltrate and impurify our precious red, white, and blue bodily fluids, I don’t know what is!
I have little doubt that future Republicans will blame it all on a long gone Obama.
Haha, I read this
as if it were saying “50 years to 200 million years” at first.
I think appropriately enough, it’s hauling ass over the Indian Ocean. :)
I took Amasia to be a smashing together of (Am)erica and Asia. The -erica just got subducted out of the picture :)
Dang, if I want to be around to see this I better start taking better care of myself.
Laurasia II?
if those island/continents got subducted beneath present day continental plates or eroded away it would be mighty difficult to infer they ever existed.
As a geologist shooting from the proverbial hip you mentioned, yes and no. What you would be left with is a few possible lines of evidence. An accretionary wedge of bulldozed material formed as the plate subducts under the overriding plate, as well as the potential of a magmatic arc (read: volcanoes) forming inland from the subduction zone, as subducting material gets remelted and rises to the surface.
All of this depends on a lot of variables, and of course, erosion and reburial of rock is the great equalizer. Imagine all the great geologic wonders we’ll never see just because they are buried under miles of bedrock above!
Great post.
Awsome, thanks Middlebrook!
-if the conservative Republican dinosaurs still exist 50 to 200 million years from now, perhaps they can call it Amerasica.
‘only 500 years in YEC time’ … priceless zing