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Earth’s Prehistoric All Sea

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At several times in Earth’s history, superoceans, or expanses of water, surrounded supercontinents. Scientists have long established that the formation (and dissolution) of supercontinents occurs approximately every 600 million years. First came the supercontinent Nuna, which developed about 1.6 billion years ago, and then Rodinia, which developed about 800 million years ago. The last supercontinent to form was Pangea about 200 million years ago. When Pangea split up to eventually form the seven continents now, they divided the former super ocean into the various oceans that exist today.

Only recently have humans made the conscious choice to study the oceans beyond simply using them as “terrain” to traverse or map to find other features. In December 1872, the British naval vessel HMS Challenger set out on a circumnavigation of the world, sailing into and mapping the world’s many interconnected oceans. The ship has laboratories equipped with microscopes, sample collection bottles and chemicals, as well as more than 300 kilometers of twine on board. It also wants to learn more about what’s going on beneath the surface. They took samples of sediment, plants, rocks and water from the seafloor. While they didn’t discover anything revolutionary, they started the science of oceanography so that humanity could learn more about how this huge part of our planet works and affects us all.

Today, we know more about the lunar surface than we do about the deepest parts of the ocean, as 95% of the lunar surface is completely in darkness, and trillions of tons of water are a natural barrier to exploration. Scientists need sonar and deep-sea vehicles, instruments and robots to learn more about it. But more than a century of oceanographic and geological research has demonstrated the existence of super oceans and super continents due to plate tectonics.

Tethys, for example, is the vast ancient sea named after the Greek goddess of the sea. On the other side is the Panthalassa, Greek for “all seas,” a vast ocean that reaches the poles and is about twice the size of the Pacific Ocean. The east and west coasts of Pangea must have been hit and damaged by strong winds and rainstorms on a scale and intensity that none of us can imagine today. Storms that begin to form in superoceans have more than 20,000 kilometers of uninterrupted waters that expand into gigantic waves that have the power to reshape coastlines.

Scientists hypothesize that a new era of supercontinents is on the horizon. For example, the Indo-Australian plate is still moving toward Eurasia, causing the Himalayas to rise by about two centimeters per year. Will the Atlantic Ocean continue to expand? Will the Pacific grow to be as big as its predecessor, the Panthalassa? Or will the Indian Ocean soon rule the world? Whatever happens, living on a planet governed by vast amounts of water and weather conditions is sure to be challenging.

Directed by: Pete Kelly

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