Looks at the Supercontinent Cycle; explores the history of its discovery; and includes discussion of Pangaea, the fusing of all of Earth's landmasses, and the lesser-known Rodinia, which existed approximately one thousand million years ago.

The supercontinent-cycle hypothesis attributes planetary-scale episodic tectonic events to an intrinsic self-organizing mode of mantle convection, governed by the buoyancy of continental lithosphere that resists subduction during the closure of old ocean basins, and the consequent reorganization of mantle convection cells leading to the opening of new ocean basins. Characteristic

Antarctica preserves a rock record that spans three and a half billion years of history and has a remarkable story to tell about the evolution of our Earth, from the hottest crustal rocks yet found in an orogenic system, to the assembly and breakup of Gondwana in the Phanerozoic. This

This book is a collection of papers presented in the 30th International Geological Congress, held in Beijing, on global tectonic zones supercontinent formation and disposal. The papers deal with topics on tectonic framework, and petrology and geochemistry variations of Asian regions.

To this day, there is a great amount of controversy about where, when and how the so-called supercontinents--Pangea, Godwana, Rodinia, and Columbia--were made and broken. Continents and Supercontinents frames that controversy by giving all the necessary background on how continental crust is formed, modified, and destroyed, and what forces move