“The forming of supercontinents and their breaking up appears to have been cyclical through Earth's history. There may have been many others before Pangaea.”
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supercontinents
I am not proud of my ignorance but am so pleased to be schooled! Pangaea was only among the most recent of many super-continents!? #geology FTW!
That was just one of a stream of mind-blowing reveals from this utterly spectacular, stupendously delicious #book, “Aerial #Geology”.
I want to be Mary Caperton Morton when I grow up. The book is wonderfully written and designed. If I make anything remotely this informative and delightful and thoughtful as this, life achievement unlocked.
@22 shiiiit
As a geologist, I need to get that.
@icefox I love geology so much, as a casual student and as a human who lives on the earth. You're the first geologist I've met so I must tell you—I'd gladly fund an illustrated edition of James McPhee's *Annals of the Former World*. It's got such lovely prose, and I know he didn't mean it to be illustrated, but I'd love to see the places and people and rocks he's talking about in high-res/glossy color.
But this book by Mary Caperton Morton is so gorgeous, and well written (first few pages) too!
- She uses the phrase “water-logged plates” to explain how oceans are heavier than continents so the North American Plate (which is carrying the entirety of North America + half the Atlantic Ocean) is 🏄♀️ surfing on top of the Pacific Plate—one inch a year!
- North America makes its regular trip to the equator every few eons.
- Metamorphisis cooks soft sandstone to quartzite, one of the hardest rocks evar.
- Red rock country in SW USA is (just, *is*) because it was the bottom of a primordial sea.