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A comment on Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010). Parent comment

Re:Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010) by samplatt on Wednesday January 11, 2017 @08:16PM (#13379094)
Isn't it a bit early to be calling it a cycle? I mean, we've not even completed one full iteration yet.

Unless I'm wrong, and the tectonic plates existed and were moving long before the oceans did?

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Re:Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010) by bcraven on Thursday January 12, 2017 @04:48AM (#13381074)
No we have plenty of evidence of previous cycles. It's called the Wilson Cycle:

http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/Fichter/Wilson/Wilson.html

For further reading I can recommend 'Supercontinent' by Ted Nield.

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Re:Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010) by Tushon on Wednesday January 11, 2017 @08:37PM (#13379179)
One full iteration of continent formation and breaking up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supercontinents#Prehis...

Seems to indicate otherwise, but I'm certainly no expert on geology or whatever sub-specialization is concerned with plate tectonics and history of them.

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Re:Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010) by sjwright on Thursday January 12, 2017 @01:55AM (#13380321)
By that logic, it's a bit early to conclude that Pluto orbits the sun. We haven't even seen it go half way around yet.
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Re:Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010) by FreeFull on Wednesday January 11, 2017 @08:35PM (#13379171)
The cycle has already completed many times. At all points there were oceans somewhere, it's not like the water materialised out of nowhere recently.
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