"The Mediterranean is the remnant of a much larger ocean that has closed over the last 100 million years, and it will continue to close," he said. The Atlantic has widened, and Australia has migrated north. Africa has collided with Europe, closing off the Mediterranean Sea.
That collision has pushed up the Alps and the Pyrenees mountains, and is responsible for earthquakes that occasionally strike Greece and Turkey, Scotese noted.Ībove: The possible appearance of the Earth 50 million years from now. "Italy, Greece and almost everything in the Mediterranean is part of (the African plate), and it has been colliding with Europe for the last 40 million years." What's it like to see two continents collide? Just look at the Mediterranean region today.Īfrica has been slowly colliding with Europe for millions of years, Scotese said.
"All we can do is make predictions of how plate motions will continue, what new things might happen, and where it will all end up." Among those predictions: Africa is likely to continue its northern migration, pinching the Mediterranean closed and driving up a Himalayan-scale mountain range in southern Europe. "We don't really know the future, obviously," Scotese said. Christopher Scotese, a geologist at the University of Texas at Arlington, has made an educated "guesstimate" of how the continents are going to move hundreds of millions of years into the future. The surface of the Earth is broken into large pieces that are slowly shifting - a gradual process called "plate tectonics." Using geological clues to puzzle out past migrations of the continents, Dr. Notice the clumping of most of the world's landmass into one super-continent, "Pangea Ultima," with an inland sea - all that's left of the once-mighty Atlantic Ocean. Above: A map of the world as it might appear 250 million years from now.
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