About 200 million years ago, the last supercontinent began to break up. The division of Pangea It gave way, very little by little, to the current geological composition. But what was separated will come together again. The continents keep movingcrashing into each other, and one theory suggests that it will be within 250 million years when another supercontinent will emerge.
We have named it as Pangea Ultimaand the truth is that it will not matter exactly which countries we have as neighbors.
Pangea Ultima. plate tectonics It is curious because they continue to move one under the other, and that is what has led to the theory of continental drift. These movements are studied to understand the past, as well as to decipher the future, and one of those scholars is Christopher Scotese.
This American geographer is the creator of the PALEOMAP Projectwhich seeks to show not only how the elements have moved these last 1,000 million years, but is also attributed the prediction of that future supercontinent. and Scotese elaborated this map:
What is it that has inspired the one who opens this article:
Curious neighbors. According to this, within about 50 million years North America would have rotated so much that Alaska would be at a subtropical latitude and Eurasia would also rotate, but in the opposite direction, making Britain closer to the North Pole. Africa will move closer to Europe and Arabia, both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean will disappear and, within 100 million years, the Atlantic will begin to shrink.
It will be in 150 million years when the Atlantic will disappear as a result of being sucked in by the American continent, bringing America and that block composed of Eurasia and Africa much closer. And the culmination will occur within 200 million years when this new supercontinent is formed, with the Indian Ocean as a central sea and a curious neighborhood mix.
According to this model, Latin America would be more or less the same, but with African neighbors to the east. Cuba would be attached to the United States, Greenland would be next to Canada (bad luck, Trump) and Spain would continue to border France and Portugal, but also with Italy, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. England would also be close to France and Korea would be in a curious sandwich between Japan and China.
It will make exactly the same. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter what your new neighbors seem to you, not because, obviously, you won’t be there to suffer them, but because humanity may have become extinct by then. Not because we sometimes put effort into it, but because the conditions will not be the most ideal for the life of mammals.
In a study Published in Nature, researchers predicted that 92% of the Earth would be uninhabitable for mammals. The reason is that, in a simulation of the climate of this new supercontinent, it is estimated that the temperatures of a large part of Pangea Ultima will be more than 40ºC, but in addition the amounts of CO₂ will make the life of mammals… complicated.
Due to the number of collisions between plates, there will be great volcanic activity that will increase the CO₂ emissions into the atmospherea, not only warming the planet, but also encouraging the levels of this CO₂ to double the current levels. In addition, the Sun will be 2.5% brighter at that time because its nuclear fusion rate will have increased and this is something that will also contribute to making the planet drier.
Spain not so bad. It’s not a very encouraging outlook, to be honest, since plant life will also experience mass extinction, but researchers point out that conditions may not be so bad in all parts of the new world. Thus, those closest to the top of the North Pole could have cooler conditions that facilitate better adaptation to life. And Spain, Portugal, Morocco or England are in that scenario.
It is also possible that we become specialists in desert environments, becoming nocturnal animals in something similar to what was seen in ‘Dune‘. Alexander Farnsworth, one of the researchers who have simulated the climate conditions of that future, also analyzed From the most serious point of view, how life makes its way in the climate of Arrakis and points to this parallelism with the Earth in 250 million years.
one more. Is this what the Earth will look like in 250 million years? Namely, but there are several hypotheses formulated in recent decades that, in one way or another, point to the existence of that supercontinent. One is Novopangeawhere the Pacific will close. another is Auricawith the closure of both the Atlantic and the Pacific. And another model is Amasiawith the union between Asia and America.
And it doesn’t matter the model, they are still similar to the last Pangea and, after this new supercontinent, the estimate is that the Atlantic will open again, separating the countries and beginning a new cycle of rupture. What will happen to life? Well, it will make its way, as the great Jeff Goldblum already said in ‘jurassic park‘, because mass extinctions… there have been several.
Image | Coffee
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A version of this article was published in 2025
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