Amasia (supercontinent)
Possible future supercontinent
- 1 min read
- 2 chapters
Related on Lably
Origin
The name was originally coined by Paul F. Hoffman at Harvard University in reference to a 1992 model by Chris Hartnady at the University of Cape Town in which Antarctica will stay put at the South Pole, and the other continents coalesce around Asia and Australia in the northern temperate latitudes around 250 million years from now. A February 2012 study predicts that Amasia will form over the North Pole in about 50 to 200 million years and close the Arctic Ocean. A 2022 model suggests that it might take as much as 600 million years for Amasia to form as the Pacific closes and that much of the detail of how and how fast the continents move would depend on the strength of the oceanic lithosphere.
Sign in to keep reading
One more chapter is free with a Lably account.
Alternative scenarios
Paleogeologist Ronald Blakey has described future tectonic development up to between 75 and 100 million years from now as fairly settled and predictable but no supercontinent will form in that time frame. Beyond that, he cautions that the geologic record is full of unexpected shifts in the tectonic activity that make further projections "really, really speculative." In addition to Amasia, two other hypothetical supercontinents—Christopher Scotese's "Pangaea Proxima" and Roy Livermore's "Novopangaea"—were illustrated in an October 2007 New Scientist article. Another supercontinent, Aurica, has been proposed in more recent times.