As I stated before, Earth has
experienced a number of super-continents, which is when all or most of the land
masses are in the same place. Pannotia was one of those super-continents. It
was fairly short lived, forming about 650 million years ago, and starting to
break up 560 million years ago.
In this particular case, most of the
land is south of the equator, centered around the south pole. There were a few ‘islands’
stretching towards the equator. Pannotia also included several seas trapped
between batches of land, and one long skinny bay that looks like it might
actually reach the south pole, according to the drawings.
Only South America and Africa - and
possibly Australia - are recognizable land masses in the drawings. All the
other continents are apparently unformed, bits and pieces scattered across the
drawings. For instance, Siberia and Baltica have not yet joined with a lot more
pieces of land to form Eurasia. Laurentia - which apparently will eventually
become most of Canada - is a long piece of land located along (the current west
coast of) South America. Most of the pieces of land on the drawings have no
names attached to them at all.
I know we’re talking millions of
years here, but how fast have these land masses been accumulating and then
dissolving? And in between coming together, they just seem to zip all over the
place, meeting up with other bits of land in new and different patterns.
Kind of makes me think of a kaleidoscope,
where all the different pieces of colored crystals form new and intriguing
patterns with every slight twist of the barrel.
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