My thoughts on the Supercontinent Cycle

-ACCELERATION OF THE SUPERCONTINENT CYCLE-

-Why the acceleration of the supercontinent cycle is central in understanding Earth Plate tectonics?

Acceleration of the supercontinent cycle is not a new idea from the millennial, nor my idea. At the dawn of the supercontinent cycle, researchers already hypothesised the acceleration based on a very trivial observation of the timing of supercontinents occurrences in the past (Pangea, at -300 Myr, Gondwana, at -600 Myr, Rodinia, at -1,000 Myr and Columbia, at -1,800 Myr). These four supercontinents already suggest that the repetition of assemblies could fasten towards modern times. However, it was a very speculative idea, as the evidence of all supercontinents were still to be shown and published. In 2025, this question is far from being resolved as new parameters have now influenced our understanding of Plate tectonics and the supercontinent cycle. How does these new researches help us to solve this question? Let’s try to investigate it through few recent papers.

The existence of Rodinia and Columbia have been supported since 1988 (Cawood et al 2016, Zhao et al., 2002), enhancing the beliefs of the geoscientists in the supercontinent cycle as a strong and complete theory in Plate tectonics. These two supercontinents are observable in the geological records as two events that shaped greatly the Earth evolution. Nowadays, no scientists would question the existence of Rodinia and Columbia as true supercontinent in Earth plate tectonics history. The supercontinent Gondwana has followed a much more complicated path since 1988. Indeed, the community has become clearly fragmented over the existence of Gondwana as a true supercontinent (Nance et al., 2022). However, Gondwana (Pannotia, in the new literature) was one of the first supercontinent to be recovered at around -600 million years to -500 million years, but its existence has since been challenged deeply. As already developed by some authors, the existence of Gondwana or not is a much more central question than the scientific community tends to consider (Figure 1, article Pannotia: To be or not to be?). Scientists should address this question, instead of eluding the scientific problem.

article online

Avoiding Gondwana as a true supercontinent in the cyclicity is strong advocate of the 600 Myr and the 800 Myr cyclicities (Mitchell et al., 2021 and Zhao et al., 2018). The 600 Myr cyclicity is based on paleomagnetism and true polar wander which only recovers Columbia and Rodinia connected to Pangea. The 800 Myr cyclicity is based on a solid analysis of the geological records (metamorphism, paleogeography, etc.) and recovers Columbia and Rodinia and hypotheses a much older supercontinent called Kenorland at -2,500 Myr (All connected to Pangea in the sequence). The 500 Myr cyclicity is the based on the Wilson cycle theory and considers Gondwana a true supercontinent but fails to maintain a 400 to 500 Myr cyclicity throughout the Earth history (Pangea, at -300 Myr, Gondwana, at -600 Myr, Rodinia at -1,000 Myr, a supercontinent at -1,500, Columbia at -1,800 Myr and Kenorland at -2,500 Myr). Finally, considering Gondwana in the cyclicity mathematically leads you to the acceleration of the cycle… This was pointed out by Condie and Aster in their paper in 2013 (Figure 2), suggesting that the acceleration is a trivial question but yet having no scientific proof of it.

It is in 2022, almost ten years after their paper, that I came up with some clues about a possible acceleration of the supercontinent cycle (Figure 3). Based on a mathematical analysis of the occurrence of the supercontinent in history and considering Gondwana as a true supercontinent, I was able to recover a mathematical equation that can recover the acceleration of the supercontinent cycle (-2,000, -1,000, -540, – 260, -40 and +160 Myr). This equation can integrate Gondwana in a coherent sequence of assemblies, opening a possible solution to the existence of Gondwana as a true supercontinent? Although the paper is compelling, there are new problems to be addressed.

Indeed, the fragmentation of the scientific community was mostly occurring because of the impossibility to fit Gondwana in the supercontinent cycle. Therefore, scientists had found ontological solutions to decipher the supercontinent cycle. As always, the discovery of the acceleration of the supercontinent cycle comes with new scientific problems in the Earth Plate tectonics evolution. Has it merely shifted the scientific problems, or is it a potential solution? Indeed, the cyclicity consider Eurasia at -40 Myr as a putative supercontinent. Luckily, Eurasia had been recently considered as a megacontinent by Wang et al., 2019 (Figure 4), but considering it as a supercontinent is far more intriguing and doubtful!

While trying to publish the paper, I realized that this finding is much more controversial than any other paper that I have been reading about in geology. The megacontinent hypothesis fits the 600 Myr cyclicity and thus does not change deeply our understanding of Plate tectonics (Still has its limits…). However, the acceleration of the supercontinent cycle completely redraws our understanding of Eurasia and its connection to the supercontinent cycle. Finally, the acceleration predicts the next supercontinent at +160 Myr in the future, much earlier than common prediction at +250 to +500 Myr in the future. Many new questions to be addressed.

Conclusion:

In this short article, we have seen that the question of the acceleration of the supercontinent cycle has advanced but is still not solved. Has the finding of the acceleration of the supercontinent shifted the problems in Earth Science, or does it propose a coherent solution to the supercontinent cycle? Is the supercontinent Gondwana rightfully back in the sequence of the supercontinents?

References discussed:

Cawood et al 2016

–Link :

Zhao et al., 2018

-Link

Zhao et al., 2002

-Link :

Nance et al., 2022

-Link :

Mitchell et al., 2021

-Link :

Condie and Aster, 2013