Just can’t trust them Aussies…

1.7-Billion-Year-Old Chunk of North America Found Sticking to Australia

Researchers from Curtin University in Australia examined rocks from the Georgetown region of northern Queensland. The rocks — sandstone sedimentary rocks that formed in a shallow sea — had signatures that were unknown in Australia but strongly resembled rocks that can be seen in present-day Canada.

The researchers, who described their findings online Jan. 17 in the journal Geology, concluded that the Georgetown area broke away from North America 1.7 billion years ago. Then, 100 million years later, this landmass collided with what is now northern Australia, at the Mount Isa region.

A simple matter of plate tectonics over a really, really long time. Rather longer than 6,000 BC, I should think…

This joining of bits of Canada and Australia predates even the supercontinent of Pangea. The Earth has seen numerous supercontinents since the oceans began; they come together, then split, the individual continents drifting around, sometimes to the other side of the world and rejoin. Right now the Atlantic ocean is slowly spreading, shoving Europe and Africa away from the Americas. In the far future the continents will rejoin into yet another supercontinent. Conditions within that continents will most likely *suck;* the coasts will get rainfall, but the interior will be a blasted, dry desert. Not a drop of rain for tens of thousands of years, for hundreds of millions of years. Bleah. Supercontinents stink.