240 million years ago to 250 million years in the future
Why Worldbuilding Stack Exchange recommends it
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange answerers and commenters link it as a visual reference for how continents drift, rift and reassemble over deep time when building planets, coastlines and sea levels.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2018 to 2021.
What it is
A 12-minute animation by paleogeologist Christopher Scotese showing plate tectonic motion from Pangea 240 million years ago, through the present, to the predicted supercontinent Pangea Proxima 250 million years ahead. The description also explains why the East African rift is shown as a failed rift arm rather than a new ocean opening.
What people said
Recommends PoorCorrelation · 2020-02 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What Else Could Reduce Global Sea Levels?”
The effect you're looking for is plate tectonics. Basically if you can't change how much water is in the container, make the container larger. Tectonics and glaciation are the 2 big effects we've seen historically, tectonics explains the Cretaceous sea levels. Here's some tectonics that change sea level globally: Open up an inland low area (that could become a sea) caused by the rifting of continents. (<- this was happening during the Cretaceous). Get a feel for how they break and reassemble by watching videos of it: [this video] . Basically some sort of activity happens in the mantle (sorta unclear why exactly the mantle is hard to study), then the crust thins in an area and slowly gets pulled a
Cites JBH · 2018-07 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Post-apocalypse: large mammals erased, can homo sapiens 2.0 build civilisation?”
Hi L. I'm not sure of this. 30M years is a lot of time for vulcanism to redeposit minerals and metals on the surface. I wholly agree that it wouldn't be an identical path, but that's a lot of time. Check this out [this video] . Besides, other than via a few nuclear explosions, how much metal has actually been "lost?" The answer should be none(ish), right? Old cities would become new surface-deposit metal mines. I'm just wondering.
Cites PcMan · 2021-04 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How fast and how would fjords erode?”
250 Million years is MUCH too long. in 250 million years, odds are that the coastline the fjord used to be on, has rammed full speed into another continent, gotten subducted, and is already being spewed out again in a volcano. Very few land features, especially so coastal terrain, would be at all intact after 250MY. For example... 250 million years ago, India was in the southern Arctic circle, part of what we would call antartica.The southern side of the himalayas was 1500m under water. The northern side of the himalayas was nuzzled up in the armpit of what is now Ethiopia, in the form of swampy lowlands. [this video] As for the Scandinavian Fjords? A mere 90 million years ago, they were hundreds
Cites Escaped dental patient. · 2021-05 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Help with my ocean currents”
There's a video here [this video] that Forbes magazine [LINK] showed a while ago, might help. Doesn't give ocean currents, mind you.