Do you wanna dance ...

Pretty amazing full plate tectonic animation of the last billion years from @AndrewMerdith - Merdith et al. 2021 (Earth Science Reviews) @MullerDietmar @EarthByteGroup @UniAdelSciences https://t.co/Plne1y1Qm7 pic.twitter.com/IIFGRaZ3vD

— Alan Collins (@geoAlanC) January 29, 2021

One billion years of Earth's surface doing a slow motion dance is now accurately depicted in a captivating animation for the very first time. Mezmorzing to say the least. 

Unlike on every other rocky planet in the solar system, Earth’s surface is a giant jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are constantly on the move. Each puzzle piece is a tectonic plate, tremendous tartines made of the planet’s crust and a rigid slice of the underlying, squidgy-but-solid mantle. These plates move around at the same rate that your fingernails grow, bumping into, sliding next to and tumbling under and over each other — and in doing so, they sculpt the face of the world. 

It (the animation ed) includes the time Earth was a giant snowball 700 million years ago; the proliferation of complex animal life 540 million years ago; the greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history 252 million years ago; the evolution of flowering plants 130 million years ago; the creation of the Himalayas 45 million years ago; and — right at the last geologic second — the appearance of modern humans.

Its scientific uses aside, the animation also resonates with people on a visceral level.

“It’s quite hypnotic,” Dr. Pérez-Díaz said, “even for me, and I see them all the time.”

Continents Split Up at the Same Speed Finger Nails Grow. And That’s Fast.

North America lurching away from Africa some 195 million years ago after spending tens of millions of years only slowly breaking apart. Credit...Sascha Brune

Moving just millimeters at a time, it took the ancient supercontinent Pangea hundreds of millions of years to break apart into today’s landmasses. But a study published Tuesday shows that the journey wasn’t always a leisurely drive. When under extreme strain, the tectonic plates hit the throttle and accelerated to speeds 20 times faster than they were traveling before.

Do you wanna dance indeed. :)