Why the Mediterranean will eventually disappear

By S.H.

IF YOU happen to find yourself on the Mediterranean Sea, take a minute to observe the shore. Watch closely for a while (for a year, to be precise), and you might notice it budge slightly (about 2cm, or a little less than an inch). Africa and Europe are slowly colliding in a process that has lasted for 40m years, pushing up the Alps and Pyrenees along the way. This continental drift will continue long into the future, until 50m years from now when the two continents meet and become one mega-continent: Eurafrica. The Mediterranean will disappear altogether, to be replaced by a mountain range as big as the Himalayas. It will be an unrecognisable world.

Continental drift is a relatively recent addition to the geological canon, and was only widely accepted in the 1960s. The tectonic plates underneath the Earth are constantly moving, dragged around by convection currents in the planet’s mantle. In recent years scientists have gained a good understanding of how continents used to move: they now theorise that multiple super-continents have been created in cycles over the course of Earth’s history. The most recent such landmass, Pangea, broke up approximately 200m years ago, meaning the Earth is currently in the middle of a cycle. Extrapolating from historical data allows researchers to forecast what might be in store.