We know that the earth is in constant motion, not just rotating on its axis or revolving around the sun, but also from within its crust and mantle. The tectonic plates have been shifting around and that has caused many geographical changes to occur.
The video above from ArcGIS gives us a short timelapse of how the supercontinent, pangea, broke apart and drifted such that the seven continents arrived at their current locations that we know today. The video starts from 200 million years ago and moves at a pace of 5 million year increments at the rate of 2.5 million years per second.
Not only that, Open Culture also explores what the future of earth's geography will be as well with the help of a video from Christopher Scotese titled Future Plate Tectonics: Pangea Proxima.
In it, Scotese postulates that in 250 million years, the seven continents will once again merge together to form Pangea Proxima.
The supercontinent is formed in multiple stages which starts with the merging of Africa, Europe, and Asia in 25 to 50 million years; which then proceeds with the movement of Australia and Oceania to merge with Southeast Asia from the 50- to 100-million-year mark; and from the 150- to 200-million-year mark, the Americas and the Africa-Eurasia-Australian mega-continent will drift toward each other until they eventually become Pangea Proxima with parts of the former Indian Ocean at the center.
Beyond this, another study suggested something somewhat similar to Scotese's Pangea Proxima, but with a different name, Pangea Ultima, and a more tragic end for mammals as the extreme temperatures would make 92% of earth's surface uninhabitable.
(Video credit: ArcGIS/Youtube; Christopher Scotese/Youtube)