Pangaea Proxima

A rough approximation of Pangaea Proxima according to the early model on the Paleomap Project website. The central sea is the "Medi-Pangaean Sea". The newer model has Australia and Antarctica between South America and southeast Asia, south of the Medi-Pangaean Sea.

Pangaea Proxima (also called Pangaea Ultima, Neopangaea, and Pangaea II) is a possible future supercontinent configuration. Consistent with the supercontinent cycle, Pangaea Proxima could form within the next 250 million years. This potential configuration, hypothesized by Christopher Scotese in November 1982, earned its name from its similarity to the previous Pangaea supercontinent. Scotese later changed Pangaea Ultima (Last Pangaea) to Pangaea Proxima (Next Pangaea) to alleviate confusion about the name Pangaea Ultima which could imply that it would be the last supercontinent.[1] The concept was suggested by extrapolating past cycles of formation and breakup of supercontinents, not on theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of tectonic change, which are too imprecise to project that far into the future. "It's all pretty much fantasy to start with," Scotese has said. "But it's a fun exercise to think about what might happen. And you can only do it if you have a really clear idea of why things happen in the first place."[2]

Supercontinents describe the merger of all, or nearly all, of Earth's landmass into a single contiguous continent. In the Pangaea Proxima scenario, subduction at the western Atlantic, east of the Americas, leads to the subduction of the Atlantic mid-ocean ridge followed by subduction destroying the Atlantic and Indian basin, causing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to close, bringing the Americas back together with Africa and Europe. As with most supercontinents, the interior areas of Pangaea Proxima are presumed to become humid, semi-arid deserts that will be prone to extreme temperatures up to 55°C.[3] Most land mammals, including humans, are speculated to be driven to extinction (comparable to the Permian–Triassic extinction event) because of these environments.[4]

  1. ^ Williams, Caroline; Nield, Ted (20 October 2007). "Earth's next supercontinent". New Scientist. 196 (2626): 36–40. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(07)62661-X. Archived from the original on 13 April 2008. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
  2. ^ "Continents in collision: Pangaea Ultima". NASA Science News. 6 October 2000. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  3. ^ Kargel, Jeffrey S. (2004). "New World". Mars: a warmer, wetter planet. Springer. ISBN 978-1-85233-568-7.
  4. ^ Farnsworth, Alexander; Lo, Y. T. Eunice; Valdes, Paul J.; Buzan, Jonathan R.; Mills, Benjamin J. W.; Merdith, Andrew S.; Scotese, Christopher R.; Wakeford, Hannah R. (October 2023). "Climate extremes likely to drive land mammal extinction during next supercontinent assembly". Nature Geoscience. 16 (10): 901–908. Bibcode:2023NatGe..16..901F. doi:10.1038/s41561-023-01259-3.