2
The Changing Face of the Earth Throughout
the Ages
Frédéric Fluteau and Pierre Sepulchre
The face of the Earth has changed dramatically over the last
4.5 billion years. The growth and emergence of the continental crust transformed a largely ocean-covered planet in its
early days into a planet with land masses. Under the action
of mantle dynamics, the first continental crusts merged with
island arcs to constitute the first continents at the end of the
Archean and the Paleoproterozoic (see Fig. 2.1 for a chart of
geological time). These continents gathered to form the first
documented supercontinent (Bleeker 2003) around 1.5 Ga,
before breaking up and then coalescing again. Each phase
has profoundly changed the Earth’s surface. Vast mountain
ranges got uplifted and ocean basins formed, then disappeared, through erosion or later geological events for the
former, by posterious closure linked to tectonics for the
latter. The climatic upheavals that have marked the Earth’s
history are strongly linked to these paleogeographic events
through direct or indirect coupling between the different
solid, liquid and gaseous envelopes that are depicted in
volume 2. Here we provide an overview of the major geological stages of the early Earth before detailing the paleogeographic changes of the modern Earth in terms of
continental distribution and paleotopography.
Paleogeographic Reconstructions
Paleogeographic reconstruction requires to quantify the
changes in location of the continents, as well as their
coastlines and topography, through the geological ages. Here
we describe the techniques and tools used to retrieve such
information, as well as the uncertainties inherent in each
method.
Continental Drift
In 1915, the German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, laid the
foundations for continental drift in a book entitled Die
Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of
Continents and Oceans). This theory is based on several
arguments, in particular on the complementarity of the
continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the continuity
of the terrain and their deformations. But Wegener was not
the first to make these observations. A Dutch cartographer,
Abraham Ortelius, observed this complementarity of the Old
and New Worlds in his atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
published in 1570 and questioned the cause of this rupture
and this expansion towards the west in his book Thesaurus
Geographicus published in 1596 (Romm 1994). Two hundreds and fifty years later, the French geographer, Antonio
Snider-Pellegrini, published “The Creation and its Unveiled
Mysteries” (1858) in which he drew the position of the
continents after the closure of the Atlantic Ocean. However,
the theories of Wegener were not limited to the complementarity of the continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean and
geological continuity, he also postulated on the basis of the
paleontological continuity of flora (Glossopteris) and fauna
(Mesosaurus, Lystrosaurus, Cynognathus), and paleoclimatic continuity. Glacial sediments from the Carboniferous
era were discovered at the end of the nineteenth century in
Africa, India and Australia. Wegener showed that by closing
the Atlantic and Indian oceans, all these outcrops would
form a coherent cluster close to what was the South Pole at
the time. All these arguments supported the idea of a
supercontinent, the Pangea. This revolutionary theory of the
continental drift was strongly rejected by the Earth sciences
community who preferred to believe in their fixity, and who
criticized Wegener for the absence of mechanisms
F. Fluteau (&)
Université de Paris, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, CNRS,
75005 Paris, France
e-mail: fluteau@ipgp.fr
P. Sepulchre
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement,
LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191
Gif-sur-Yvette, France
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
G. Ramstein et al. (eds.), Paleoclimatology, Frontiers in Earth Sciences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24982-3_2
23
The Changing Face of the Earth Throughout
the Ages
Frédéric Fluteau and Pierre Sepulchre
The face of the Earth has changed dramatically over the last
4.5 billion years. The growth and emergence of the continental crust transformed a largely ocean-covered planet in its
early days into a planet with land masses. Under the action
of mantle dynamics, the first continental crusts merged with
island arcs to constitute the first continents at the end of the
Archean and the Paleoproterozoic (see Fig. 2.1 for a chart of
geological time). These continents gathered to form the first
documented supercontinent (Bleeker 2003) around 1.5 Ga,
before breaking up and then coalescing again. Each phase
has profoundly changed the Earth’s surface. Vast mountain
ranges got uplifted and ocean basins formed, then disappeared, through erosion or later geological events for the
former, by posterious closure linked to tectonics for the
latter. The climatic upheavals that have marked the Earth’s
history are strongly linked to these paleogeographic events
through direct or indirect coupling between the different
solid, liquid and gaseous envelopes that are depicted in
volume 2. Here we provide an overview of the major geological stages of the early Earth before detailing the paleogeographic changes of the modern Earth in terms of
continental distribution and paleotopography.
Paleogeographic Reconstructions
Paleogeographic reconstruction requires to quantify the
changes in location of the continents, as well as their
coastlines and topography, through the geological ages. Here
we describe the techniques and tools used to retrieve such
information, as well as the uncertainties inherent in each
method.
Continental Drift
In 1915, the German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, laid the
foundations for continental drift in a book entitled Die
Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of
Continents and Oceans). This theory is based on several
arguments, in particular on the complementarity of the
continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the continuity
of the terrain and their deformations. But Wegener was not
the first to make these observations. A Dutch cartographer,
Abraham Ortelius, observed this complementarity of the Old
and New Worlds in his atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
published in 1570 and questioned the cause of this rupture
and this expansion towards the west in his book Thesaurus
Geographicus published in 1596 (Romm 1994). Two hundreds and fifty years later, the French geographer, Antonio
Snider-Pellegrini, published “The Creation and its Unveiled
Mysteries” (1858) in which he drew the position of the
continents after the closure of the Atlantic Ocean. However,
the theories of Wegener were not limited to the complementarity of the continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean and
geological continuity, he also postulated on the basis of the
paleontological continuity of flora (Glossopteris) and fauna
(Mesosaurus, Lystrosaurus, Cynognathus), and paleoclimatic continuity. Glacial sediments from the Carboniferous
era were discovered at the end of the nineteenth century in
Africa, India and Australia. Wegener showed that by closing
the Atlantic and Indian oceans, all these outcrops would
form a coherent cluster close to what was the South Pole at
the time. All these arguments supported the idea of a
supercontinent, the Pangea. This revolutionary theory of the
continental drift was strongly rejected by the Earth sciences
community who preferred to believe in their fixity, and who
criticized Wegener for the absence of mechanisms
F. Fluteau (&)
Université de Paris, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, CNRS,
75005 Paris, France
e-mail: fluteau@ipgp.fr
P. Sepulchre
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement,
LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191
Gif-sur-Yvette, France
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
G. Ramstein et al. (eds.), Paleoclimatology, Frontiers in Earth Sciences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24982-3_2
23