Supercontinent

The continents are spread around the globe at present, but in a couple of hundred million years it is likely that they will join together to form one giant continent, Novopangaea. In Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet Ted Nield tells of how the continents come together in this way. Novopangaea of course gets its name from Pangaea, the last such supercontinent, which was here about three hundred million years ago.

People have long suspected that the present day continents aren't the whole story. Nield tells of myths of sunken continents, such as Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria. Alfred Wegener's idea of continental drift took a lot of getting used to though, and Nield gives some fascinating details of the arguments for and against this idea.

A few hundred million years before Pangaea there was another supercontinent Rodinia - possibly responsible for the 'snowball earth' and so indirectly for the Cambrian explosion of life. There were probably several other supercontinents before that. Nield tells of how the continents would have originally formed, and of the different methods used by scientists to deduce how they have moved. The book is written for a non-technical readership, and would of interest to anyone who wants to know about the long history of the earth