The plate structural super cycle is a spin the Earth experiences a time of 400 to 600 million years from where the mainlands were a solitary enormous landmass to now where they are discrete mainlands that are spread the world over. This procedure is rehashed again and again from an enormous landmass to single mainlands and back again and is the thing that structures a cycle or a succession of occasions.
Climate change occurs when changes in the earth’s climate system result in new weather patterns that remain in place for an extended period of time. This length of time can be as short as a few decades to as long as millions of years, and that is how long ago the plate tectonic (related to earth’s surface plate movement) supercycle happened which caused climate changes all around the world. The following will include the articles against “scientific American” by Dana Hunter (2016) and “eurekalert” by
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Dana Hunter from the article “scientific american” arguments how as continents move around the world due to the unpredictable changes of plate tectonics it changes everything else too, but most importantly climate. He talks says “It shocked me to learn how intimately rocks are connected to climate”, CO2 is stored up in rocks such as limestone and is how the pushing underneath something else carbonate rocks add to the CO2 outgassing from volcanoes.
Although the article from “eurekalert” by university of texas at Austin examine further and has hypothesised the connections the beginning of plate tectonics “snowball earth” a time of environmental change that sent the planet into a deep freeze that lasted millions of years.
The earth is the only planet known to have plate tectonics with crust and upper mantle being made up of separate distinct pieces that move slowly creating and destroying landforms and producing volcanoes and large earthquakes. The geologist proposed 22 different ways plate structural movement could have realised worldwide cooling that caused the earth to be covered from pole to pole with ice. They incorporate explosive volcanoes cooling the planet by releasing sulfur into the atmosphere, shifting of the plates, changing the planet’s rotational axis and increased rock weathering pulling co2 a greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere and back into the earth.
Life began on earth around 3.5 - 4 billion years ago and has been evolving ever since. The articles ‘The Conversation” by both professors Ross large and John long (2015) and “ Eurekalert” by the University of Utah (2007) addresses how the evolution of life on earth has been driven by plate tectonics or has been tied to earth movement. Ross large and John Long observation regards their research on how they suggest that the regular collision of tectonic plates over the past 700 million years has been a prime driver of evolutionary change on earth. They used laser technology from the University of Tasmania to analyse more than 4,000 pyrite grains from seafloor mudstone samples collected from around the world, this will allow scientists to determine the trace elements in the ocean and if it has varied over 700 million years. Their findings were most astonishing when they find that there were certain periods in earth’s history when nutrient trace elements were highly enriched in the oceans and other periods when levels of these critical trace elements were very low. Nutrients in the oceans ultimately come from weathering and erosion of rocks on the continents, weathering breaks down the minerals in the rocks and releases the nutrient trace elements which nourish life. This is why when weathering and erosion rates increase for extended periods more nutrients are supplied to the oceans. In the long term, it leads to a dramatic rise in erosion rates during mountain building events caused by the gradual collision of tectonic plates. Geologists say since the 1960s that collisions of tectonic plates lead to the formation of huge mountain ranges and that the Himalayas were formed when India drifted northwards after the splitting off of the supercontinents of Gondwana and slammed into Asia and pushed up the Tibetan Plateau. The professor’s comments on how about 370 million years ago, the origin of the first land animals, tetrapods corresponds with a decrease in oceanic nutrients and are the cause of a series of mass extinction events in the ocean. Though this explains why certain sarcopterygian fishes with robust limbs left the oceans when they did because of the poor nutrient in the ocean and went on land instead. It also links with the relationship between increased nutrients in the oceans with many evolutionary changes clearing correlated for the early part of the cycles, but less clear is correlated with the evolution of advanced land animals.
On the other hand, the article by the University of Utah explains how geologists are saying that ground movements formed mountains and valleys, creating environments that favored the emergence of humanity. The accelerated uplift of mountains and highlands stretching from Ethiopia to South Africa blocked most of ocean moisture converting lush tropical forests into an arid patchwork of woodlands. They describe the 3,700 mile long stretch of highlands and mountains as “the wall of Africa”, it’s parallel to the famed East Africa Rift valley where many fossils of human ancestors were found. Supercontinent is where animals and plants are free to roam because it’s one big land but as plate tectonics shift, it separates different species. Separate continents now land masses separated by mountains and oceans evolve on their own or possibly even a breakup of a continent also creates new types of habitats making more ecological niches available.
In contrast, both articles comments and explains how plate tectonics is ultimately responsible for the evolution of humankind and the trace of elements such as copper and zinc. Overall the article “the conversation” isn’t as reliable or favourable because it doesn’t explain how the separation of continents affected evolution and life on earth, it was very vague on backing up what their theories and findings were.
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