Pangaea Proxima

Pangaea Proxima (also called Pangaea Ultima, Neopangaea, and Pangaea II) is a possible future supercontinent configuration. In keeping with the supercontinent cycle, Pangaea Proxima could form within the next 250 million years. This potential configuration, hypothesized by Christopher Scotese in November 1982, earned its name from its similarity to the ancient Pangaea supercontinent. Scotese later changed the name of Pangaea Ultima (Last Pangaea) to Pangaea Proxima (Next Pangaea) because the name Ultima could imply that it would be the last supercontinent. The model was derived from extrapolation of past cycles of formation and breakup of supercontinents, not from theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of tectonic change, which are too imprecise to be projected that far into the future. "It's all pretty much fantasy to start with," Scotese has said. "But it's a fun exercise to think about what might happen. And you can only do it if you have a really clear idea of why things happen in the first place." Supercontinents describe the merger of all or nearly all of Earth's landmass into a single contiguous continent. In the Pangaea Proxima scenario, subduction at the western Atlantic, east of the Americas, leads to the subduction of the Atlantic mid-ocean ridge, followed by subduction destroying the Atlantic and Indian basin, causing the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans to close, and bringing the Americas back together with Africa and Europe. As with most other supercontinents, the interior areas of Pangaea Proxima are presumed to become semi-arid or desert regions, which will be prone to extreme temperatures up to 131°F. Most land mammals, including the descendants of humans, may be driven to extinction (as were many orders of terrestrial vertebrates during the Permian–Triassic extinction event) because of these environments.