Our changing planet
Breakup of Pangea
250 million years ago, there was a single gigantic continent called Pangea. View an animation of what became of this supercontinent. (Animation by Natalie Renier, WHOI Graphic Services)
The Age of the Seafloor
Seafloor spreading occurs at divergent boundaries where plates split apart from each other, as mid-ocean ridges do. The youngest oceanic crust is depicted with light blues and the crusts get increasingly older and denser (darker blues) as they move away from these points and are pushed underneath neighboring plates in subduction zones. (Animation by Natalie Renier, WHOI Graphic Services)
Seafloor age/tectonic data: Zahirovic, S., K. J. Matthews, N. Flament, R. D. Müller, K. C. Hill, M. Seton, and M. Gurnis (2016), Tectonic evolution and deep mantle structure of the eastern Tethys since the latest Jurassic, Earth Science Reviews, 162, 293-337, doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.09.005
DEEPER DISCOVERY