The next supercontinent is expected to form roughly 200 to 300 million years from now. It won’t be Pangea reassembling in its original shape, but the same forces that built Pangea (and at least two supercontinents before it) will push Earth’s landmasses back together into a new configuration. Scientists have proposed four distinct models for how this could happen, and each one produces a very different world.
The Supercontinent Cycle
Earth’s continents have been assembling and breaking apart for at least two billion years. This pattern, called the supercontinent cycle, is driven by the slow churning of the mantle beneath the crust. Tectonic plates drift apart, oceans open between them, and then subduction zones pull those same plates back together until they collide into a single massive landmass. The cycle then resets.
Three supercontinents came before Pangea. The oldest well-documented one, called Nuna (or Columbia), lasted about 300 million years. Rodinia, which formed next, held together for 200 to 250 million years. Pangea, the most recent, lasted only about 150 million years before breaking apart around 180 million years ago. The trend is clear: each supercontinent holds together for a shorter period than the one before it. Geodynamic modeling suggests this happens because Earth is slowly cooling over time, which makes the mountain belts formed during continental collisions weaker and more prone to rifting apart.
Four Competing Models
Scientists have proposed four scenarios for the next supercontinent, and they differ based on which oceans close first.
- Pangea Proxima: The Atlantic Ocean closes. The Americas drift back east and collide with Africa and Europe, forming a landmass that roughly resembles the original Pangea. A narrow, stagnant remnant of the Atlantic persists as an inland sea.
- Novopangea: The Pacific Ocean closes instead. The Americas drift westward into eastern Asia and Australia.
- Aurica: Both the Atlantic and Pacific close, with a new ocean opening through the middle of present-day Africa and Eurasia. All continents converge near the equator.
- Amasia: Neither the Atlantic nor Pacific closes in the traditional sense. Instead, the Arctic Ocean and Caribbean Sea vanish as North and South America migrate northward and fuse with Europe and Asia near the North Pole.
Which Scenario Is Most Likely?
Recent supercomputer simulations from Curtin University’s Earth Dynamics Research Group point toward the Pacific closing. The reasoning comes down to the age and thickness of ocean floor. Because Earth has been cooling for billions of years, the rock beneath younger oceans like the Atlantic and Indian is relatively thick and strong, making it resistant to subduction. The Pacific, by contrast, is a remnant of the ancient Panthalassa superocean that began forming around 700 million years ago. Its older, thinner crust is already being pulled under surrounding continents along the Ring of Fire.
The Pacific is currently shrinking by a few centimeters per year. Its present width of roughly 10,000 kilometers is predicted to take two to three hundred million years to close completely. That timeline aligns well with estimates for the next supercontinent’s arrival. This favors the Novopangea scenario, though the Amasia model (which involves partial Pacific closure combined with Arctic closure) remains a serious contender. Research from Yale based on the magnetic signatures locked in ancient rocks found that each successive supercontinent forms about 90 degrees offset from the last, which supports the idea that the next one assembles over the Arctic rather than retracing Pangea’s footprint.
What Pangea Proxima Would Look Like
The most detailed future reconstruction comes from geologist Christopher Scotese, who mapped out a “Pangea Proxima” scenario in 250 million years. In his model, Greenland and North America collide with western Africa to form the core of the new landmass. Florida and the southeastern United States slam into southwestern Africa. South America merges with South Africa and East Antarctica to build the supercontinent’s southwestern section.
A single global ocean, which Scotese calls the Propanthalassic Ocean, would surround the supercontinent. A ring of subduction zones (a “New Ring of Fire”) would encircle the entire landmass. Trapped inside the continent, a completely enclosed body of water called the Medi-Pangean Sea would become stagnant and oxygen-depleted. Scotese predicts this toxic inland sea could poison surrounding waterways and atmosphere, potentially triggering a mass extinction.
Climate on a Future Supercontinent
Where the continents end up matters enormously for global climate. Modeling from Columbia University’s climate group found that in the Aurica scenario, with all land concentrated around the equator, Earth could warm by about 3°C globally compared to today. In the Amasia scenario, with land piled near the poles, the opposite happens. The lack of land between the poles disrupts the ocean currents that currently carry tropical heat toward higher latitudes. The poles stay ice-covered year-round, snowfall increases dramatically, and the ice reflects enough sunlight back into space to cool the entire planet.
The most alarming projections come from a scenario resembling Pangea Proxima, sometimes called Pangea Ultima. A 2023 study found that global temperatures could rise 15°C above pre-industrial levels, with land temperatures climbing as much as 30°C higher. That would return Earth to conditions similar to the Permian-Triassic era about 260 million years ago, when more than 90% of species went extinct. Vast inland deserts would dominate the supercontinent’s interior, while humid, sweltering conditions would grip the coasts.
What This Means for Life on Earth
Mammals are particularly vulnerable to supercontinent heat. In humid conditions, mammals begin dying at sustained temperatures as low as 35°C (95°F) because they can no longer cool themselves through sweating or panting. Even in dry air, sustained exposure above 40°C (104°F) is lethal. A supercontinent centered on the tropics, with dramatically elevated baseline temperatures, would produce heat spikes well beyond those thresholds across most of the landmass.
Today’s average plate movement speed is about 1.5 centimeters per year, roughly the rate your fingernails grow. Some plates move faster (coastal California shifts nearly 5 centimeters per year relative to the continental interior), but even at these speeds, the journey to the next supercontinent spans hundreds of millions of years. For context, 250 million years ago there were no mammals, no flowering plants, and no birds. Whatever species exist when the next supercontinent forms will be as unrecognizable to us as Permian reptiles would be to a modern human. The question of habitability is less about our species and more about whether complex warm-blooded life can persist at all under those conditions.