Snow-covered Himalayan peaks and valleys photographed from the International Space Station.

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Preparing the 3D view

Preparing lighting and the first complete frame…

Model scale

GPlates MULLER2019. 10 Ma snapshots. modern coastline shapes reconstructed.

Continental positions 200 million years ago.

Move towards 200–250 million years ago to examine Pangaea, then rotate the globe to compare continental positions.

How to read these results

The reconstruction moves modern coastlines; ancient shorelines also changed with sea level and landscape development.

Continental drift

Compare reconstructed continental positions through time and use fossil and coastline evidence to discuss the former arrangement of Pangaea.

Drag to rotate. Hold Ctrl and scroll to zoom, or pinch on a touch screen.

Why it happens

Continents move with tectonic plates. Matching geological evidence across oceans helped establish continental drift, and plate reconstructions combine evidence to estimate earlier continental positions.

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The Himalaya from the ISS: crust shortened and thickened as India collided with Eurasia.

Try a comparison

Move Time before present towards zero and follow India northward. Use geological evidence as well as coastlines when explaining how earlier positions are reconstructed.

Reading the result

Modern coastlines are moved by a reconstruction model; ancient coastlines also depended on sea level, erosion and sedimentation.

A common misunderstanding

Matching modern coastlines is enough to prove how the continents once fitted together.

Coastlines change with sea level, erosion and deposition, so their fit is approximate. Reconstructions also use continental margins, matching rock sequences and structures, fossils, and magnetic evidence. Agreement among different kinds of evidence provides a stronger basis for estimating past continental positions.

Cases

Exam language

Pangaea

A supercontinent assembled during the late Palaeozoic and broken apart during the Mesozoic. Its reconstruction uses evidence from rocks, fossils, magnetism and continental margins. Pangaea was one of several supercontinents in Earth’s history, rather than Earth’s original crust.

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Permian Glossopteris leaf from Antarctica. Related fossils on separated southern continents are evidence that these lands were once joined within Gondwana, which formed part of Pangaea.

Continental shelf

The gently sloping, submerged outer part of a continent, extending from the coast to the shelf break.

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NOAA South Atlantic bathymetry. Colour represents seafloor depth, revealing continental margins, abyssal basins and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Lithosphere

Earth’s rigid outer mechanical layer, comprising the crust and the uppermost mantle. It is divided into tectonic plates and overlies the weaker asthenosphere. The lithosphere is therefore thicker than the crust alone.

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Mantle peridotite carried to the surface as a xenolith within volcanic rock. It provides a sample of solid upper mantle. The lithosphere includes crust and rigid upper mantle; the green xenolith is not a piece of crust.

Continental drift

The movement of continents over geological time, proposed by Alfred Wegener using evidence such as matching fossils and rock belts. Plate tectonics later supplied a wider explanation: continents move as parts of lithospheric plates that also include ocean floor.

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The Himalaya from the ISS: crust shortened and thickened as India collided with Eurasia.

Seafloor spreading

The formation and outward movement of oceanic crust at a spreading ridge. Magma cools to form new crust as the plates separate. Increasing rock ages and broadly matching magnetic polarity sequences on either side provide evidence for this process.

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NOAA, Galápagos Rift, 21 July 2011. Lava quenched in seawater forms pillows close to a spreading centre, where new oceanic crust is built.

Subduction

The descent of one lithospheric plate beneath another into the mantle at a convergent boundary, commonly involving oceanic lithosphere.

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NASA ARIA observations of surface displacement following the 2025 Kamchatka megathrust earthquake. The coloured displacement field is measured evidence of movement, not a photograph of the buried fault.

Supercontinent

A large assembly containing most of Earth’s continental landmasses. Geological evidence records several episodes of assembly and breakup, including Pangaea. Their histories involve different oceans, plate boundaries and timescales rather than a perfectly repeating arrangement.

Shelf fit

Comparison of continental margins, rather than modern coastlines, when reconstructing former continental positions. Sediment cover and deformation make the fit approximate.

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Ma before present200 Ma