The Whole Saga of the Supercontinents

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to http://to.pbs.org/DonateEons ↓ More info below ↓ The study of natural history is the study of how the world has changed but Earth itself is in a constant state of flux -- because the ground beneath your feet is always moving. So if we want to know how we got here, we have to understand how "here" got here. Thanks to Nathan E. Rogers, Julio Lacerda, Franz Anthony and Studio 252mya for their illustrations. You can find more of their work here: https://252mya.com/licensing Produced for PBS Digital Studios. Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eonsshow Twitter - https://twitter.com/eonsshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/eonsshow/ References: http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hess1962.pdf → Hess’s first paper proposing seafloor spreading http://courses.washington.edu/ess502/Vine_Matthews.pdf → Vine and Matthews’s first description of mirrored magnetic anomalies https://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/eens1110/pltect.htm → Class notes from Stephen Nelson @ Tulane on the history of discovery and mechanisms of plate tectonics http://www.indiana.edu/~g105lab/1425chap13.htm → Additional rundown on the mechanisms of plate tectonics http://www.whoi.edu/sbl/liteSite.do?litesiteid=9092&articleId=13407 → Biography of Marie Tharp http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/oct252003/1121.pdf → review article of pre-pangaean continents doi:10.1038/ngeo1069 → Paper linking the P-Tr extinction to Siberian Traps volcanism lighting coal on fire http://dx.doi.org/10.1144/SP326.4 → Very solid reconstructions of Rodinia and Pannotia https://www.le.ac.uk/gl/ads/SiberianTraps/Documents/White2002-P-Tr-whodunit.pdf → review of the potential and probable causes of the PTr extinction, as well as some discussion linking the TrJ extinction to the rifting of North America away from Pangaea http://science.sciencemag.org/content/340/6135/941 → TrJ extinction linked with North American rifting https://web.archive.org/web/20080413162401/http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/104ns_011.htm → Future continents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwWWuttntio → Basic animation of continental movements https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQywDr-btz4 → Animation of Pangaea Ultima (although video called it Pangaea Proxima for some reason) https://books.google.com/books?id=apA8DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=kenorland&source=bl&ots=NBXie9PMCu&sig=nmvdLZWskjuGbSuXtuA_kcUY1SA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGuOTf6OrYAhVOyWMKHba1BnY4ChDoAQg0MAM#v=onepage&q=kenorland&f=false http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.566.6728&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://people.earth.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Evans/52_12b-Zhang+Nuna.pdf http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2001-news/Hedges8-2001.htm