Novopangaea or Novopangea ( Greco-

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

for "New Pangaea") is a possible future

supercontinent In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continent, continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. However, some geologists use a different definition, "a grouping of formerly dispersed continents", ...

postulated by Roy Livermore in the late 1990s. It assumes closure of the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

, docking of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

with

East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

and

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

, and northward motion of

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

Alternative scenarios

Paleogeologist Ronald Blakey has described the next 15 to 100 million years of tectonic development as fairly settled and predictable but no supercontinent will form in that time frame. Beyond that, he cautions that the geologic record is full of unexpected shifts in tectonic activity that make further projections "very, very speculative". In addition to Novopangaea, two other hypothetical supercontinents—" Amasia" and Christopher Scotese's " Pangaea Ultima"—were illustrated in an October 2007 ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a popular science magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organ ...

'' article. Another supercontinent prediction, Aurica, has been proposed in more recent times, suggesting the closures of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Research by Masaki Yoshida and Madhava Santosh in August 2011 suggests that due to the presence of relatively hot large low-shear-velocity provinces below

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

and the Pacific preventing convergent plate tectonics,

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

might not be able to cross the Pacific as suggested by the Novopangaea model, rather staying close to its current position relative to North America, and Antarctica may not be able to leave the South Pole as suggested. Therefore, they suggest that while

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

, Africa, Australia, and North America may merge as suggested, South America and Antarctica will remain separate from the resultant supercontinent by an only partially closed Pacific Ocean.

Alternative scenarios

References

Further reading