SCIENCE: Does the Earth Eat Its Oceans Every Billion years?
The ancient supercontinent of Rodinia turned inside out as the Earth swallowed its own ocean some 700 million years ago, new research suggests. Rodinia was a supercontinent that preceded the more famous Pangea, which existed between 320 million and 170 million years ago. In a new study, scientists led by Zheng-Xiang Li of Curtin University in Perth, Australia, argue that supercontinents and their superoceans form and break up in alternating cycles that sometimes preserve the ocean crust and sometimes recycle it back into Earth’s interior. “We suggest that the Earth’s mantle structure only gets completely reorganised every second supercontinent [or … Read more