Just about the coolest thing in a really, really, REALLY long time

In middle school and high school, when we learned about continental drift, we learned that there had been a supercontinent, Pangaea, which broke apart millions of years ago into two smaller supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Gondwanaland comprised South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia, and broke apart first; Laurasia was made up of North America, Greenland, and Eurasia, and separated some 90 million years after Gondwanaland. Presumably, then, plate tectonics working as it does, other supercontinents existed before Pangaea, broke apart, and recombined; and presumably, the continents we know today will one day collide and form a new supercontinent. All pretty straightforward.

Until tonight, however, I had no idea that geologists actually have honest-to-God evidence of where past supercontinents lay. Nor did I have any idea just how many there's evidence for. I mean, really, seriously, wow -- they can identify iron-bearing rock layers that are the same age and have identically aligned magnetic fields, and thus identify regions which used to be adjacent but aren't anymore. How freaking awesome is that?

At first I was annoyed that I hadn't learned about this back when we were studying Pangaea, but then I noticed that the most recent proposed pre-Pangaea supercontinent (as in most recently in existence prior to Pangaea, not most recently proposed), Pannotia, was first described in 1997 -- three years after I graduated, and if memory serves, about the same time I took intro geology along with madandrew. So I guess I don't feel quite so deprived.