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A polar-projection map shows how the next supercontinent, dubbed Amasia, may shape up 50 million to 100 million years from now, based on an orthoversion model of continental drift.
Fifty million to 200 million years from now, geologists expect Earth's continents to smash together into one big supercontinent, just as they've done repeatedly in our planet's distant past — and a new computer model suggests that the Arctic Ocean and Caribbean Sea will be among the first things to go.
That hasn't been the conventional wisdom: In the past, scientists have assumed that either the Atlantic Ocean will close up, reversing the trend that broke apart the last supercontinent ... or that the current spreading zone in the Atlantic will push the continents 180 degrees around the world to close up the Pacific instead.
The third possibility, outlined in this week's issue of the journal Nature, goes in a different direction.
"Our model says that with every supercontinent cycle the whole arrangement needs to be shifted 90 degrees. So it's quite a shift." Yale geologist Ross Mitchell told me. "A tectonic shift."
The model is based on an analysis of the magnetism of ancient rocks. Mitchell, a doctoral student at Yale, took on the project with fellow student Taylor Kilian and Professor David Evans, the Nature paper's senior author. The rocks record how the orientation of Earth's continental plates has changed with respect to the magnetic poles over billions of years, and the researchers looked for the characteristic back-and-forth magnetic signature of a supercontinent taking shape.
"By identifying these back-and-forth motions around a stable axis, we had a measure of the center of that axis," Mitchell said. "All we had to do was find continents which had that axis from two successive supercontinents, and you could measure the angle between two successive axes."
A computer model developed by a Yale research team traces one scenario for the shifts in Earth's continents, starting with a rewind from the present, then going forward through the latest Pangaea supercontinent cycle. The animation reflects the "orthoversion" model for the rise and fall of supercontinents.
The readings from the rocks were fed into a computer program that could essentially wind the clock back on the crashes that formed past supercontinents, as well as the smashes that broke them apart. Scientists say that there have been at least three supercontinents in Earth's distant past: Pangaea, which goes back 300 million years; Rodinia, which dates to roughly 1 billion years ago; and Nuna, which existed about 1.8 billion years ago.
Amazing Amasia
Mitchell and his colleagues saw a pattern where rocks on the edge of one supercontinent became the central point for the next. That translates roughly into a 90-degree angle on the globe. For Pangaea, the central point was in present-day Africa. The newly published model, known as the orthoversion model, suggests that the central point for the next supercontinent, known as "Amasia," will be around the present-day North Pole.
The model shows North and South America pushing together to close up the Caribbean. North America would be drawn along the Pacific "Ring of Fire" to crash into Eurasia and close the Arctic Ocean. The Mediterranean Sea would disappear when Africa smashes into Europe. Australia would continue its current northward drift, becoming part of Asia somewhere between India and Japan. Antarctica, meanwhile, would be left out of the supercontinent, at least at first.
"We'd probably have a thick ice cap at the center of the supercontinent," Mitchell said. But Amasia wouldn't stay frigid. The model suggests that the supercontinent would twist around to bring more of its land mass closer to the equator.
The model can't set a time frame for the creation of Amasia, but it looks as if the continental cycle is quickening somewhat, based on the rise and fall of past supercontinents. That leads the Yale researchers to suggest that Amasia will take shape during the next 50 million to 200 million years.
'A leap ahead'
J. Brendan Murphy, a geologist at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, said the Nature paper "provides a unified and plausible explanation of events that for many of us are enigmatic."
"It is certainly a leap ahead in the debate," he said, but he added that the debate is far from over.
"As you go deeper into time, the database, like most things in geology, becomes less reliable. ... We really need more accurate data for the episodes that they're talking about," he said.
A more thorough analysis of magnetic rocks could provide more evidence to support the orthoversion model, or knock it down. It might even turn out that continents can follow a variety of models to bunch up into supercontinents. "Even if the model doesn't stand up to the test of time, we'll learn a lot by testing it," Murphy said.
Mitchell told me that learning more about the clash of continents can provide insights into the migration of biological species over the course of deep time. For example, the rise and fall of Pangaea played a key role in the dispersal and specialization of species across the world. But it's impossible to predict how the rise of the next supercontinent will affect Earth's future inhabitants.
"I would be quite surprised if humans lasted long enough to see the next supercontinent come to fruition," Mitchell said. "The truth is that none of the present scientific community will be around 100 million years from now to test these models."
More about tectonic shifts:
- Flash interactive: Earth's timeline
- Upside-down mountain revealed inside Earth
- Plate tectonics could be essential for alien life
- Rock links Antarctica and North America
Mitchell, Kilian and Evans are co-authors of "Supercontinent Cycles and the Calculation of Absolute Palaeolongitude in Deep Time." The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
I can hardly wait to see how this model pans out in reality. Wake me.
ok. see ya then.
I don't believe in supercontinents! D=<
Yeah, I'm with torn. Humans can't even plan 50 years ahead. 50 million? lmao. Won't be any humans in any shape nor form then.
I leave this for my great ^ 19 grandchildren to worry about.
.
Look at the possibilities if you are buried after death, and lay undisturbed. You get to travel the globe for free, with no baggage fees!
By then you'll be just another app on an IPhone.
In all candor, if man doesn't get a handle on the hateful things which divide us from one another, we won't make it for another 200 years. Let alone 50 million to 300 million. It really doesn't take much except honesty and "will". Just accept this news as prophesy. And dedicate ourselves to science instead of superstition, that will free mankind from the extinction cycles forever. Figure it out. Mobilize to do it. Then "Just Do It"! Put the Nike Swoosh on the survival manual for posteritys sake.
Ha ha - Long Island will get wiped on the side of Columbia like a booger! What happened to Mexico and Central America though?!?
I'm sick and on cold meds, so excuse me if I missed the obvious, but if the time distance between the last 2 supercontinents is between 800 and 1,000 million years, and we are 300 million years from Pangea.....why the assumption that this one will happen twice as fast?
I told my wife I would take to Hawaii. Now I don't have to. It's coming to us !
Humans: Oil for the next dominant species.
Oh, you still believe that old comic book explanation that oil comes from dead dinosaurs. How quaint.
you mean as opposed to the pathetic delusion that some big voodoo daddy made it all up 5000 years ago?
well, you could be considered half right, the oil didn't actually come from the dinonsaurs, it came fromwell before the dinosaurs
If these geo-paleontologists were able to rewind the continental drift clock back and forth
hundreds of millions of years, they would ALSO have been able to use human population
migratory patterns as the basis to PREDICT the living spaces and/or positioning of
OTHER intelligent species. Look at WHERE the PREDICTED COASTAL EDGES of previous
super continents were and then dig thousands of feet deep into areas now near
the interior of Russia and Western Canada (Mid-Alberta, Eastern British Columbia)
and mid-latitude of eastern Africa and i HIGHLY SUSPECT you be able to answer
a question recently put forth by a high school student to a geography teacher.
--
"If humans using their hands could build iPhones and Cars, Spaceships and TV,
why couldn't the dinosaurs?" ... The teacher's paraphrased answer was highly
logical and insightful....
"Who says they didn't? -- Do you see buildings from 5000 years ago in your backyard?
Do you see anything other than crumbling bits and pieces of civilization from even
a few decades ago still hanging around?" -- "Who says that EVOLVED dinosaurs
DIDN'T make all these things and either just died out or were able to finally
move away off-planet? After hundred of millions of years what would be left
other than shards of ceramic or some exotic super-material?"
---
That answer to me was VERY PROFOUND and NOW I personally believe
that we humans ARE NOT THE FIRST INTELLIGENT MACHINE-MAKING
SPECIES that has existed on this planet.
Dig much deeper at the long-buried coastlines of ANCIENT super-continent coastlines
and I WILL BET YOU TWO-BITS you will find ceramics, super-materials, maybe even
some sapphire-diamond memory card from 500 million years ago that MIGHT still
have some data on it after all these epochs. ...OR IF YOU DIG REALLY DEEP ENOUGH,
the ancient engineers of old may have had enough ultra-computer horsepower to
ACCURATELY PREDICT continental drift and there COULD BE an INTENTIONALLY
made deep-underground "Technology Ark/Super-Library" protected from the
massive geo-forces shaping this planet...ready to be discovered and used for
humanity's benefit.
While conjecture and a bit off-the-wall, it's not necessarily an UNTRUE statement!
"Absence of Evidence is NOT Evidence of Absence" - Carl Sagan
Look closer, look harder and dig way deeper to see if that ancient "Saurian" civilization
might leave some existential evidence for humanity to find!
--
Comments On This Hypothetical Scenario Are Very Welcome!
Uh-uh.
We'll let you do the digging :)
I think this is actually a pretty impactful concept ... something everyone should see and ponder.
Think about it. Wouldn't this help people understand just how closely related all our lives are? Our nation states, our countries, our "borders" ...
Illusions!
All of them. Pieces of floating Earth, crust, and mantle.
All of our politics, religions, cultures, races ... all for not. We are lucky enough to be sentient beings. Conscious creatures that can understand this. Yet we war, kill, enslave, and torture one another over such petty, trivial differences. And, the really sad part is that it only seems to be getting worse.
Uhgg. I started this post with positive point. Now I've only depressed myself.
u hit the nail on the head (acts of the few,out way the vews of the meny)
It's actually getting better. That whole "I keeps getting worse" thing is addressed in several books. Shermer addresses it in a couple of his: it's a persist beliefs, but it isn't true.
So cheer up! Check out "The better angels of our nature." That should cheer you up. (Except that it's about 50% overpriced.)
Geology and Politics also have very different time concepts. In geology a thousand years is a small interval. In politics, a week is an eternity.
Nature does not recognize man-made political boundaries.
"All of our politics, religions, cultures, races ... all for not."
It's naught btw..
Oh yeah, everyone should ponder the hell out of it, lol. What amazes me is how scientists are able to use technology and see all that. Like the ability to use computers and go back in time and see how the universe looked a few billion years ago and how it will look a billion or so years from now. It would be really cool if we could see what evolution will have Man, whatever, looking like way into the future. In the meantime I'll sit and ponder, burning out some brain cells wondering, lol.
Not as many cells as I just burnt reading your post.
I'm not quite sure I understand ... is your sheer hatred of science a personal vendetta, or just a hobby?
It's quite shocking really, to see the palpableness of people's vitriol regarding mankind's greatest mechanism for self-enlightenment and discovery.
Good sir, if science gets you this bent out of shape, why on earth are you on this thread.
Whoaaaa,,,,man, where did you get the impression that I hate science? Man, talk about knee jerking, lol. Well, anyway, we read and perceive as we wish to perceive, and, I'll agree to one point you made, you definitely did not understand.
Ha, my bad! I think I was reading another post literally simultaneously as I was skimming yours and my brain completely switched everything ... sorry about that! After rereading your post (and only your post), I couldn't agree more.
Pertaining to the question on human evolution, there was actually a really cool interactive study on here a few years back that looked into how human evolution might be influenced once we start merging nano technology and other inorganic systems into our bodies, but I can't remember the link/title (maybe someone else on here does)?
Anyways, sorry about that again.
Chad
If decades of highly detailed images from space where national borders are invisible hasn't changed the world in that way, showing them how those land masses will one day be arraigned, won't do it either...
Besides, Europe's had plenty of wars even with (and arguably partly because of) plenty of different national boundaries already on one land mass. Indeed, if they let you walk through the Chunnel, then right now, theoretically, you could walk from northern Scotland to southernmost India, or the Bering Strait,* or down to the Cape of Good Hope.
(* And if it ices over enough, you could keep walking on to easternmost Canada, or down to Cape Horn. Humans started in East Central Africa, and have already migrated most of these paths. It's a pretty 'connected' planet already. Only Australia and the Pacific islands took serious sailing effort to reach, and no one permanently lives in Antarctica, even now. [But had the Drake Passage been narrower...who knows what might have happened?])
This is fascinating, but don't count on it to change human behavior one bit.
It would be cool if a bridge were to built from Wales, Alaska to the Chukchi Peninsula in Russia. One could drive from the U.S. across Canada to Alaska, over to Russia and down through the PRC (Good luck on that), to the two 'Nams, swing right for India. What a trip that would be. If, a car would make it.
50 or 200 million years ! Which is it ? It makes a big difference on planning. This will make the bicentennial look small. Oh, if only Michael Jackson could be there to sing "We are the World ". Will it be a red super continent, or a blue super continent ? We should ask Ron Paul what the last super continent was like ?
we really can't say, since we don't know what evolutionary pressures will be upon us or anything else in the far future
We'll be the same. Evolutionary pressure to adapt to suit our environment, ended when we learned to adapt our environment to suit us.
I'm not so sure about this. What about evolutionary baggage that we still carry from previous generations that are causing havoc within our current systems?
Obesity, for example, is quite an epidemic in our country. Now, of course a lot of this has to do with the fact we are lazy creatures who have developed bad habits. But of course, a lot of it also has to do with how our body's metabolism evolved. When we were a plain-dwelling species thriving on the savannah, we didn't necessarily know when our next meal would take place. It made sense for our bodies to store as many on-board calories and fat reserves as possible. Now that there is a McDonald's on every corner, these reserves, and the way our body's metabolism works, is causing a bit of an issue for our fat asses.
Won't our bodies, given enough evolutionary time, start to naturally select for this social circumstance? This is just one example where I still see environmental influencers ... and why I think we will continue to evolve.
Both the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas will be gone! That will seriously limit my retirement vacation options.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, I'd better sign up for the cruises now, while I still can.
And have confidence on your trip. It wasn't the Italian Captains fault after all.
The coast line keeps moving.
The article fails to mention what happens to Rosie O'Donnell. My guess is she breaks up and forms an
archipelago
Actually, I believe she wants to be a peninsula....
She'll always be a cave .
an even bigger beach
I think it should be named "Amnesia"
Alternatively seeing as it will also include Europe, we can simply call it Nausea
archipelago
Sometimes I am just flabbergasted at the sheer paucity of intelligence in some articles on the web. And to think that such inelegance could arise from Yale University, among America's best! Perhaps they should begin to screen their students better?
1. Thermodynamics's second law insists that this could not possibly happen.
2. Ditto for the other hallucinatory ancient massive continents.
What has escaped our learned bozos is that proto earth was a lot smaller than the one we live on now, so naturally animals could reach larger scale. The round proto earth idea fixes many absurd flaws in current theory, it allows southern India's immediate proximity to south Africa, for instance.
Yeah, what Bubba said. Gee Bubba, u r smart.
Bubba, why worry about the laws of thermodynamics when a "lot smaller" "proto earth" would break the law of conservation of matter? Do you really think that large scale animals would survive the incoming rain of matter required to get the earth up to its current mass?
Bubba, where did you study science - Diplomas-R-Us?
Bubba, Can't tell if serious.... Should I be angry or tickled?
Unfortunately, people actually believe this. You can find extensive 'lessons' about this subject on you tube. *shudder* I guess my masters degree is worthless...
No, me an Bubba readed "Geology fer dummies". Ain't that right Bubba?
And I thought the second law of thermodynamics was actually driving continental drift. I guess I was wrong to think heat escaping from the center of the earth was increasing entropy.
So ... the Earth inflated as the universe expanded? I thought the Earth used to be flat.
Bush ... remember him? He was a Yalee (Yahoo?) something or other.
I see no need to promote a different theory.. but what I can clearly see from the ridiculous animation - their theory is broken.
The continents in the animation float around arbitrarily.. completely willy nilly as it were.. - they drift this way for a bit.. then randomly 'decide' to head in a different direction completely at the discretion of the animation designer without consideration of the physics required.
Someone then points out the lunacy of this.... and of course people come out of the woodwork attacking them but with comments usually only illustrating their ignorance.. things such as "u r smart"..
Funny how this defense is adequate to the average reader I guess...
Bubba,,,
Uh, you DO know that coloring books aren't the best source of scientific knowledge, don't you?
No really, You DO know that, right?
Quit applying the laws of thermodynamics incorrectly.
"What has escaped our learned bozos is that proto earth was a lot smaller than the one we live on now..."
So. Slowly moving crustal plates on a still hot soft interior is harder to believe, than making matter out of nowhere.
But if you instead mean it was the same mass, but denser, and gradually expanding (never mind how or why that could be)...Earth's surface gravity back then would have been higher, too. That's also a function of mass and density. And there's no evidence for that, that I'm aware of.
you have to spell that correctly, its "Geeawwlagy fer Dummees"
available from ICR and Answers in Genesis websites near you
actually, here is the true website that expounds this oddity,
http://www.expanding-earth.org/page_1.htm
funny how the author gets so many things wrong, its one of those oddball hypotheses like the "electric universe" hypothesis
Frank, I think this theory is not saying 'matter from nowhere'. It is asserting that matter is coming from outer space in small increments that add up over time.
Is there any way we can stop this? How much money would it cost?
I'm thinking really, really big anchors, with extra-strong chains. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Come on guys, we could get some duct tape and anchor the continents in their current positions. I saw it on MythBusters - this will work! This will wreck this guys whole computer model. I'll volunteer to keep an eye on the duct tape the first 50 million years, if we can get three volunteers for the next 3 periods of 50 million years after that.
Oops - posted 3 times, it reported an error, but it posted anyway - sorry!
Oops - posted 3 times, it reported an error, but it posted anyway - sorry!
Society for the Prevention of Plate Tectonics. Join Now! :-)
http://www.wimble.org/SoPrePlaTec/preventionhome.html
Can this be stopped? In light of the likely decision in 50-100 million years from now, that Continents are people too, they could from a SuperPac and contribute millions of humans to further push their "merger" agenda. Any landmass they found questionable would be required, frequently, to submit in long form format their certification they are in fact, land. In addition the rights of unformed landmasses would be protected at all costs, regardless of underwater volcanic activity or unplanned shifts in the tectonic plates. This would result in 99% of the everyday land forms fighting against being forced to merge into the 1%'s vision of what the planet should be. Sadly I just see a planet continentally divided and a further shift in the poles.
Bubba You sound a lil tweaked my friend, if this is the most foolish thing you read on the web today you are having a fine day.
I suspect Bubba is pulling our leg, but now I'm not so sure. And I love Roger Ramjet's comment!
Think of all the beachfront property you could sell!
I will put it out there so no one else can:
IT'S BUSH'S FAULT: He should have been trying to prevent this instead of paying for two costly wars!
no wait,
IT OBAMA'S FAULT: He should have been trying to prevent this instead of taxing everyone for healthcare for everyone!
:-D
There I said it. Now back to the science of this all...
This stuff is amazing to be able to measure the shift in the tectonic plates that we can attempt to forecast where everyone will be (geographically) in the distant future. However, I was always taught that India came from Africa and came crashing into Central Asia. Now I am seeing a reversal? That India will become its own island? I cannot imagine after colliding what force will drive a wedge between India and Central Asia. When that happens, do you supposed that Mt. Everest (or what's left of it) will be a shear cliff that drops off into the sea? Also, I read that the Horn of Africa is ripping itself (extremely slowly) off of the African Continent yet I do not see any instance of that into this graphic depicted.
Questions, Comments, Criticisms?
Please, no QCCs for the BS Political Rant; that was merely a running gag that I see a lot of politico bashers do...
:-)
If we get all the politican's in the Capitol Building lined up and talking... would that generate enough wind to balance out the continental drift and stop this travesty?
Wow this is some interesting idea about rewriting science.
How did the Earth get bigger? Was there a second wave of comets after life formed. Or maybe another proto-planet hit the Earth. If so, there would be no evidence of previous life. Was it that one com
How does increasing entropy have anything to do with techtonic plate movement?
Are you trying to push a new set of textbook that you wrote? Where did you get your science degree?
Ah - competing scientific theories, all for naught. Mayan physicists have already calculated that as of December 31, 2012 C.E. (Julian calendar) that there is no way (or time) that there will be any more super-continents. Or continents.
or was it December 21? Future details always confuse me.
12/21/12 - my birthday and the approx. day my student loans will finally be paid off. Convienient that the world will end the same time I pay off my debts...
Odium, this would indeed prove that life is a...female dog.
A huge object will undoubtedly smash into Earth before any Amasia forms, thereby rendering all these future supercontinental predictions naught. Put that into your pipe and smoke it!
Rodserling used the word "naught", two posts before I even read it! Whoa, I can see Africa out my Arizona Room eastern window!
Did you enter the Twilight Zone?
On a scale measured by the frequency of occurrence, North America has had about four ice ages separated by few million years, comparable to the number of continental collisions separated by a few hundred million years. The North East part of North America contains evidence of both these series of events.
The world’s ocean basins are far younger than the continents, 70 to 175 million years (175 million in small areas), and have to have been reformed many times in the past. New England has experienced 4 of 5 collisions in the past, each occurrence, has left ample evidence, in the form of rock formations added to the base continent rocks. The progression of older base formations east ward in say Massachusetts yields the chronology of the collisions, older to younger events, however the rocks riding on top of the formations are coincidently progressively younger. This is not counter intuitive, since it confirms that new rock baselines are formed at the continental edges, as lighter rock separates from heaver formation sub-ducted long ago.
The evidence is made more visible to day highways cut through ancient formations, visible at 60 miles per hour and the occasional recreational areas. Carrying in the car a useful book such as James W. Skehan’s, "Roadside Geology of Massachusetts", Mountain Press Publishing Company, while wait in traffic. The following link goes to the download area (one state at a time) to add the geographic display layer to Google Earth; it can be superimposed on the map as variable transparent layer.
http://tin.er.usgs.gov/geology/state/state.php?state=MA
Rocks from everywhere in the world, to bore your friends, make and iPhone app and drive off the road, say you're looking for rocks, within 25 miles visit 7 continents.
Well, there goes the neighborhood! And so much for trying to secure the borders against illegal immigration!
1)Thank of this. If the earth heats up could it cause mantle to move faster little by little. Then could that make the tectonic plates move faster little by little. Then would that make the continents move faster.
OR THANK OF THIS
If we go through a pole shift and the poles,lets say move a mile in any direction would that make the equator move to.Then would the mantle move faster or,and change direction a little.
There is not much reason for the mantle to get warmer since the major sources of heat are diminishing if anything.
The magnetic poles move all the time, that's why they have to keep adjusting GPS satellites...so is it magnetic or geographic poles they are talking about here? I would assume geographic, since they couldn't possibly track the magnetic poles over such large time frames.
So no, that doesn't move.
And I really appreciate the idiot whose label placement has perfectly blocked from view the region where Amasia is formed.
I wonder if I'll be around to tell my great, great, (I better not type that 8 million more times or I'll tick somebody off)... great, grandchildren some geezer story about remembering what it was like when people used to go to the caribbean on vacation.
I get the general idea about plate techtonics, continental drift, etc....but, what happens when all that mass is in one area of the planet??? I know the earth has a wobble on it's axis. Does this contribute to (make it more wobbley) or does it mollify it (counter-act it)....OR...is it like weebies wobble, but they don't fall down? Would the earth ever end up with the axis over on it's side??? I guess this could happen if we were tagged by a rogue asteroid or planet. Can someone answer/speculate on this???
I suppose it would have to make some slight effect on the "wobble," but my guess is that it would be insignificant. And yes, I think it would have to be a pretty massive impact to tip us over; nothing we could survive.
Since the mass of the Earth is not uniformly distributed, the wobbles you mention are happening now. In the past and in the future when continents have been and will be distributed differently, the wobble's slightly different. However, the gravitational effect of the moon dampens the wobbles in the Earth's axis and helps to keep us pointed in generally the same direction. Our axis does sweep out a circle though (like an unbalanced top). This cycle takes about 24,000 years to complete, and the only real effect is that eventually the "north star" won't be due north anymore.
As for things hitting the Earth and causing the axis to tip over, we don't have to worry about it. The only things large enough to do that are the size of planets or large moons, and if we got hit by something that big it would end all life. A comet or asteroid could cause mass extinctions or otherwise a lot of damage, but neither are large enough to knock the planet over.
I'm trying to figure out what the Al Gore of the future will be saying. With the Atlantic ocean disappearing and South America being next to Florida will he blame the lack of hurricanes on global warming? And it looks like the Arctic will have less sea ice (mainly because land will be where ocean used to be). Will that be blamed on man made global warming too?
Looks like Gore could lose Florida again!
He won't lose Future Florida; they won't have butterfly ballots then.
If you watch the animation of the paths of these continents... and you find it BELIEVABLE..... well then, I guess you'll believe anything.
I don't believe you,,,,
Um, you DO realize the video attached to this artcle that you can click on at the top is showing PAST crustal movements, movements that have GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE to back them up.
Talk about rock -----.