In 1860, Philip Slater, secretary of the British Zoological Society, proposed an interesting theory. He found more than 29 different species of lemurs in Madagascar, far more than the 12 in the entire African continent and three in the Indian subcontinent. He recognized Madagascar as the original home or “ground zero” for lemur development and evolution. Lemurs somehow made their way across the ocean to Africa and India, or there must have been an ancient land bridge that once connected the two continents to Madagascar.
He named the land bridge “Lemuria,” which was probably the size of a continent and took up most of the western Indian Ocean. Interesting as his theory might be, at the time it wasn’t — pardon the pun — that the Earth was in motion. Other observant geologists and scientists agree that our planet wasn’t always what it is today — or what it was in Victorian times. The disappearing continent theory began to circulate in the scientific community, claiming that the continents simply collapsed and sank into the ocean due to reasons such as underground earthquakes.
We didn’t understand plate tectonics until the 20th century, and continents have been constantly shifting and breaking apart for hundreds of millions of years. While this might sound destructive, it could explain why Earth has survived for so long, especially compared to Venus, which has zero continental counts and an utter lack of diversity on the surface. Due to its homogeneous terrain that neither adapted nor evolved, Venus was technically animated by the sun.
Scientists studying the crust of ocean basins have also found evidence of supercontinents. New crust forms about an inch per year in ocean basins. At the same time, the continental crust attached to these basins is moving at the same rate. If you work backwards, you can technically represent where the land originally was. However, this method only goes back 340 million years.
The most important clues came from fossils, as scientists left the ocean and studied the land for themselves. Fossils are the petrified remains of prehistoric organisms preserved in rock. When 300-million-year-old Gosopterus plant fossils are found in Antarctica, India, Australia, South Africa, and South America, it suggests they were all part of a supercontinent with a temperate or tropical climate suitable for plant reproduction.
The final clue, of course, is the existence of majestic mountains around the world that are the result of land collisions. They rise many miles above the surrounding landscape to highlight the fact that this was a massive collision between two giant continents.
It may be another 250 million years before another era of supercontinents emerges. What life will look like when it arrives — or whether humans will still exist by then, we may never know. But it’s inevitable, and it’s coming.
