If it actually existed shouldn't Mu be included on this list,or at least mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.12.116.137 ( talk • contribs)
The first paragraph says "The assembly of cratons and accreted terranes that form Eurasia[1] qualifies as a supercontinent today", and further down we read "Some historians call the combined land mass of Africa and Eurasia the supercontinent Africa-Eurasia, but it is not a geological supercontinent". Is Eurasia counted as a supercontinent by geologists, or is it not? It can't be both, y'know. :-) Dr Zak 01:43, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
The greatest inconsistency in the whole list is;
The second greatest are;
Rolinator 11:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
in the opening paragraph the article states you have to fit specific conditions to be called a supercontinent, but then under Ur it says that one could argue it was a supercontinent (presuably because it was big for its time?) which is inconsistent. Perhaps it should be shuffled down to the notes section...
Do we need a separate List of supercontinents article when most of the same lists appear in this one? We should either merge the articles or remove the lists here to the other article. Cephal-odd 16:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
No Kool Kirby ( talk) 07:20, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
It would be nice to have a computer simulation of the history of supercontinents. I have seen a few maps and simulation, but they are incomplete. I would like to see one that shows the increase in size of our Earth over time through accretion of mass, and can be revolved to show the globe from all sizes at any time in history. Maybe a job for Google Earth?-- Robert van der Hoff 04:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
A more recent model on youTube that shows earth was much smaller, contained almost no water at all and it appear the whole landmass covered the whole sphere. As the model progresses, it expands into oceans and the actually size of the planet increases over the billions of years. If you do the math on the oceanic distances, it seem plausible as we continue to move farther from our neighbors across the pond. Today, the continents move about 4mm a year, about the grow rate of a fingernail. This topic hasn't addressed in years, but the 2008 model sort on YouTube that demonstrates the spherical growth, and there is a more recent Google Earth simulation that shows it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl5KYKz52dQ the shows the plate movement but doe not show the sphere growing in size (static size). Neverthe less, the Google example is visually the best I've seen to date. 10 Oct — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mapsurfer49 ( talk • contribs) 10:51, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
An actual model would look like the "rifting of Pangaea" animation already on the page, not like those "spherical growth" animations. The time scales are vastly different, and accretion churns up the crust enough that continents as we know them can't coexist. That said, an actual model of the whole thing would be nice, showing the history to date of the fixed-size Earth, from the crust cooling enough that cratons and oceans can form, on through the supercontinents to today. — Darekun ( talk) 04:11, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
As far as I am aware, the only supercontinents were Rodinia, Pannotia, Pangaea and to a lesser extent, Gondwana and Laurasia. Labelling Oceania a 'supercontinent' is wrong, it is just a standard continent.
A good explanation of supercontinents which I agree with is in the Sci-Tech Encyclopedia:
The six major continents today are Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, and South America. Prior to the formation of the Atlantic, Indian, and Southern ocean basins over the past 180 million years by the process known as sea-floor spreading, the continents were assembled in one supercontinent called Pangea (literally “all Earth”). Pangea came together by the collision, about 300 million years ago (Ma), of two smaller masses of continental rock, Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Laurasia comprised the combined continents of ancient North America (known as Laurentia), Europe, and Asia. Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India, and South America made up Gondwanaland (this name comes from a region in southern India). The term “supercontinent” is also applied to Laurasia and Gondwanaland; hence it is used in referring to a continental mass significantly bigger than any of today's continents. A supercontinent may therefore incorporate almost all of the Earth's continental rocks, as did Pangea, but that is not implied by the word.
Laurasia, Gondwanaland, and Pangea are the earliest supercontinental entities whose former existence can be proven. Evidence of older rifted continental margins, for example surrounding Laurentia and on the Pacific margins of South America, Antarctica, and Australia, point to the existence of older supercontinents. The hypothetical Rodinia (literally “the mother of all continents”) may have existed 800–1000 Ma, and Pannotia (meaning “the all-southern supercontinent”) fleetingly around 550 Ma. Both are believed to have included most of the Earth's continental material. There may have been still earlier supercontinents, because large-scale continents, at least the size of southern Africa or Western Australia, existed as early as 2500 Ma at the end of Archean times.
The amalgamation and fragmentation of supercontinents are the largest-scale manifestation of tectonic forces within the Earth. The cause of such events is highly controversial.
—Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Ear4rgjb (
talk •
contribs) 09:52, 21 January 2009
I want to increase the chances that someone will either agree with me or tell me not to combine the three articles.
Supercontinents - this article needs urgent attention because some of the definitions are wrong and the list of supercontinents is wrong. I have added some useful info in the discussion section of the article under 'List of Supercontinents and definition' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ear4rgjb (talk • contribs) 2009
I think that all 3 articles need to be combined into one. However I think the "so-called" list of supercontinents needs to be culled. Unfortunately I have very little experience of Pre-Cambrian geology so I can't offer my opinion on the "supercontinents" during this time. However, given that we are at a stage in history where the breakup of the continents is finishing and new continents are colliding i.e. Africa and Eurasia, there should be NO present day supercontinents in the list. You could put down Afro-Eurasia as a possible future supercontinet perhaps? I've also regone over some old references and cannot find any decent definitions of supercontinent (even in Glossary of Geology (5th Ed.) by Klaus K.E. Neuendorf, James P. Jr Mehl, and Julia A. Jackson 2005). Therefore I propose using the definition I posted on here a year ago from the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology (see above post) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ear4rgjb ( talk • contribs) 23:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello, paleocontinent redirects to this article but there is not any mention of this term into this page. Is it a synonym of supercontinent? Could you delete redirection or explain a little what is a paleocontinent? Thanks. Pamputt ( talk) 00:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed the addition of this "Palaeopangaea" hypothesis to the article. It seems that the edits were made by the author of the hypothesis. Is there a WP:Conflict of interest problem here? These hypotheses are painted as being a primary contender to the seemingly more "mainstream" ones (the many-supercontinents model). Is this a real, significant controversy in the geological community? Thanks. I also posted about this earlier on WT:WikiProject Geology. mike4ty4 ( talk) 05:56, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
There are several mentions in the "General chronology" section of " Nuna" that I think should actually be " Nena." I don't feel confident making these changes though. Could someone take a look? · rodii · 00:40, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
"Ma" is never defined before its first introduction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.241.174.197 ( talk) 01:00, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 22:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
There is a WP:AWW with text "which" at the top of the list of supercontinents. Why is it there? Newystats ( talk) 09:43, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
"Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there have been times when some formerly independent continents came together, and other times when larger continents fragmented into smaller ones. When is a grouping of continents big enough to earn the name supercontinent? Does this semantic distinction even matter? Many tectonicists use the term supercontinent in the sense of Hoffman (1999): “a clustering of nearly all the continents” or Rogers and Santosh (2003): “an assembly of all or nearly all the Earth's continental blocks”. I suggest that an “all or nearly all” definition (1) sets the bar higher than the rock record requires, and (2) is impossible to rigorously apply in the Precambrian, when plate reconstructions are equivocal. Some researchers treat Gondwana as one of the supercontinents (e.g., Condie 2005; Korenaga, 2006) but it fails to meet the “all or nearly all” definition, because it didn't include Siberia, Baltica, or Laurentia, it became Pangea. Bleeker (2003) coined the term supercraton for clusters of continents that would not meet the “all or nearly all” requirement. I prefer a more inclusive definition of supercontinent: a grouping of formerly dispersed continents."
Reviewing the literature, my take on this is that Vaalbara is now regarded as a "supercraton", rather than a supercontinent (although some workers continue to refer to it in that way). Ur is definitely regarded as a supercontinent. Kenorland (or just Kenor) also is, as are Columbia/Nuna, Pannotia and Rodinia. Arctica and Atlantica are generally not - rather more as supercratons or just continents. Laurasia and Gondwana were large continents, just not necessarily supercontinents. Mikenorton ( talk) 17:17, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
What was the name of the supercontinent comprised of the Americas and Afro-Eurasia which were connected by Beringia approx. 15,000 years ago? 2001:8003:9008:1301:AD8D:2348:2B9E:213C ( talk) 12:29, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
(Apologies if this formatting is off. Editing on the app is confusing when you’re used to desktop only)
The first section has a part that says “ The earlier continent Gondwana is not considered a supercontinent under the first definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia and Siberia were separate at the time.”
It’s not entirely clear what they mean by “the first definition”. Both definitions given prior to this statement seems to be inclusive of Gondwana. EliotWL ( talk) 15:04, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
I have twice reverted edits changing supercontinent to super-continent, and I believe another editor has reverted a third such change. Is there any credible reason to prefer the hyphenated version? I don't believe I've ever seen it in a textbook or paper in hyphenated form. The Oxford English Dictionary (
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
"supercontinent". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)) does not list super-continent as an alternate usage. -- Kent G. Budge ( talk) 00:49, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
If it actually existed shouldn't Mu be included on this list,or at least mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.12.116.137 ( talk • contribs)
The first paragraph says "The assembly of cratons and accreted terranes that form Eurasia[1] qualifies as a supercontinent today", and further down we read "Some historians call the combined land mass of Africa and Eurasia the supercontinent Africa-Eurasia, but it is not a geological supercontinent". Is Eurasia counted as a supercontinent by geologists, or is it not? It can't be both, y'know. :-) Dr Zak 01:43, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
The greatest inconsistency in the whole list is;
The second greatest are;
Rolinator 11:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
in the opening paragraph the article states you have to fit specific conditions to be called a supercontinent, but then under Ur it says that one could argue it was a supercontinent (presuably because it was big for its time?) which is inconsistent. Perhaps it should be shuffled down to the notes section...
Do we need a separate List of supercontinents article when most of the same lists appear in this one? We should either merge the articles or remove the lists here to the other article. Cephal-odd 16:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
No Kool Kirby ( talk) 07:20, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
It would be nice to have a computer simulation of the history of supercontinents. I have seen a few maps and simulation, but they are incomplete. I would like to see one that shows the increase in size of our Earth over time through accretion of mass, and can be revolved to show the globe from all sizes at any time in history. Maybe a job for Google Earth?-- Robert van der Hoff 04:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
A more recent model on youTube that shows earth was much smaller, contained almost no water at all and it appear the whole landmass covered the whole sphere. As the model progresses, it expands into oceans and the actually size of the planet increases over the billions of years. If you do the math on the oceanic distances, it seem plausible as we continue to move farther from our neighbors across the pond. Today, the continents move about 4mm a year, about the grow rate of a fingernail. This topic hasn't addressed in years, but the 2008 model sort on YouTube that demonstrates the spherical growth, and there is a more recent Google Earth simulation that shows it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl5KYKz52dQ the shows the plate movement but doe not show the sphere growing in size (static size). Neverthe less, the Google example is visually the best I've seen to date. 10 Oct — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mapsurfer49 ( talk • contribs) 10:51, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
An actual model would look like the "rifting of Pangaea" animation already on the page, not like those "spherical growth" animations. The time scales are vastly different, and accretion churns up the crust enough that continents as we know them can't coexist. That said, an actual model of the whole thing would be nice, showing the history to date of the fixed-size Earth, from the crust cooling enough that cratons and oceans can form, on through the supercontinents to today. — Darekun ( talk) 04:11, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
As far as I am aware, the only supercontinents were Rodinia, Pannotia, Pangaea and to a lesser extent, Gondwana and Laurasia. Labelling Oceania a 'supercontinent' is wrong, it is just a standard continent.
A good explanation of supercontinents which I agree with is in the Sci-Tech Encyclopedia:
The six major continents today are Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, and South America. Prior to the formation of the Atlantic, Indian, and Southern ocean basins over the past 180 million years by the process known as sea-floor spreading, the continents were assembled in one supercontinent called Pangea (literally “all Earth”). Pangea came together by the collision, about 300 million years ago (Ma), of two smaller masses of continental rock, Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Laurasia comprised the combined continents of ancient North America (known as Laurentia), Europe, and Asia. Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India, and South America made up Gondwanaland (this name comes from a region in southern India). The term “supercontinent” is also applied to Laurasia and Gondwanaland; hence it is used in referring to a continental mass significantly bigger than any of today's continents. A supercontinent may therefore incorporate almost all of the Earth's continental rocks, as did Pangea, but that is not implied by the word.
Laurasia, Gondwanaland, and Pangea are the earliest supercontinental entities whose former existence can be proven. Evidence of older rifted continental margins, for example surrounding Laurentia and on the Pacific margins of South America, Antarctica, and Australia, point to the existence of older supercontinents. The hypothetical Rodinia (literally “the mother of all continents”) may have existed 800–1000 Ma, and Pannotia (meaning “the all-southern supercontinent”) fleetingly around 550 Ma. Both are believed to have included most of the Earth's continental material. There may have been still earlier supercontinents, because large-scale continents, at least the size of southern Africa or Western Australia, existed as early as 2500 Ma at the end of Archean times.
The amalgamation and fragmentation of supercontinents are the largest-scale manifestation of tectonic forces within the Earth. The cause of such events is highly controversial.
—Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Ear4rgjb (
talk •
contribs) 09:52, 21 January 2009
I want to increase the chances that someone will either agree with me or tell me not to combine the three articles.
Supercontinents - this article needs urgent attention because some of the definitions are wrong and the list of supercontinents is wrong. I have added some useful info in the discussion section of the article under 'List of Supercontinents and definition' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ear4rgjb (talk • contribs) 2009
I think that all 3 articles need to be combined into one. However I think the "so-called" list of supercontinents needs to be culled. Unfortunately I have very little experience of Pre-Cambrian geology so I can't offer my opinion on the "supercontinents" during this time. However, given that we are at a stage in history where the breakup of the continents is finishing and new continents are colliding i.e. Africa and Eurasia, there should be NO present day supercontinents in the list. You could put down Afro-Eurasia as a possible future supercontinet perhaps? I've also regone over some old references and cannot find any decent definitions of supercontinent (even in Glossary of Geology (5th Ed.) by Klaus K.E. Neuendorf, James P. Jr Mehl, and Julia A. Jackson 2005). Therefore I propose using the definition I posted on here a year ago from the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology (see above post) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ear4rgjb ( talk • contribs) 23:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Hello, paleocontinent redirects to this article but there is not any mention of this term into this page. Is it a synonym of supercontinent? Could you delete redirection or explain a little what is a paleocontinent? Thanks. Pamputt ( talk) 00:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed the addition of this "Palaeopangaea" hypothesis to the article. It seems that the edits were made by the author of the hypothesis. Is there a WP:Conflict of interest problem here? These hypotheses are painted as being a primary contender to the seemingly more "mainstream" ones (the many-supercontinents model). Is this a real, significant controversy in the geological community? Thanks. I also posted about this earlier on WT:WikiProject Geology. mike4ty4 ( talk) 05:56, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
There are several mentions in the "General chronology" section of " Nuna" that I think should actually be " Nena." I don't feel confident making these changes though. Could someone take a look? · rodii · 00:40, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
"Ma" is never defined before its first introduction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.241.174.197 ( talk) 01:00, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 22:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
There is a WP:AWW with text "which" at the top of the list of supercontinents. Why is it there? Newystats ( talk) 09:43, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
"Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there have been times when some formerly independent continents came together, and other times when larger continents fragmented into smaller ones. When is a grouping of continents big enough to earn the name supercontinent? Does this semantic distinction even matter? Many tectonicists use the term supercontinent in the sense of Hoffman (1999): “a clustering of nearly all the continents” or Rogers and Santosh (2003): “an assembly of all or nearly all the Earth's continental blocks”. I suggest that an “all or nearly all” definition (1) sets the bar higher than the rock record requires, and (2) is impossible to rigorously apply in the Precambrian, when plate reconstructions are equivocal. Some researchers treat Gondwana as one of the supercontinents (e.g., Condie 2005; Korenaga, 2006) but it fails to meet the “all or nearly all” definition, because it didn't include Siberia, Baltica, or Laurentia, it became Pangea. Bleeker (2003) coined the term supercraton for clusters of continents that would not meet the “all or nearly all” requirement. I prefer a more inclusive definition of supercontinent: a grouping of formerly dispersed continents."
Reviewing the literature, my take on this is that Vaalbara is now regarded as a "supercraton", rather than a supercontinent (although some workers continue to refer to it in that way). Ur is definitely regarded as a supercontinent. Kenorland (or just Kenor) also is, as are Columbia/Nuna, Pannotia and Rodinia. Arctica and Atlantica are generally not - rather more as supercratons or just continents. Laurasia and Gondwana were large continents, just not necessarily supercontinents. Mikenorton ( talk) 17:17, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
What was the name of the supercontinent comprised of the Americas and Afro-Eurasia which were connected by Beringia approx. 15,000 years ago? 2001:8003:9008:1301:AD8D:2348:2B9E:213C ( talk) 12:29, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
(Apologies if this formatting is off. Editing on the app is confusing when you’re used to desktop only)
The first section has a part that says “ The earlier continent Gondwana is not considered a supercontinent under the first definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia and Siberia were separate at the time.”
It’s not entirely clear what they mean by “the first definition”. Both definitions given prior to this statement seems to be inclusive of Gondwana. EliotWL ( talk) 15:04, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
I have twice reverted edits changing supercontinent to super-continent, and I believe another editor has reverted a third such change. Is there any credible reason to prefer the hyphenated version? I don't believe I've ever seen it in a textbook or paper in hyphenated form. The Oxford English Dictionary (
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
"supercontinent". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)) does not list super-continent as an alternate usage. -- Kent G. Budge ( talk) 00:49, 12 May 2022 (UTC)