Product Description

To understand continental drift and plate tectonics, the shifting and collisions that make and unmake continents, requires a long view. The Earth, after all, is 4.6 billion years old. This book extends our vision to take in the greatest geological cycle of all—one so vast that our species will probably be extinct long before the current one ends in about 250 million years. And yet this cycle, the grandest pattern in Nature, may well be the fundamental reason our species—or any complex life at all—exists.

This book explores the Supercontinent Cycle from scientists' earliest inkling of the phenomenon to the geological discoveries of today—and from the most recent fusing of all of Earth's landmasses, Pangaea, on which dinosaurs evolved, to the next. Chronicling a 500-million-year cycle, Ted Nield introduces readers to some of the most exciting science of our time. He describes how, long before plate tectonics were understood, geologists first guessed at these vanishing landmasses and came to appreciate the significance of the fusing and fragmenting of supercontinents.

He also uses the story of the supercontinents to consider how scientific ideas develop, and how they sometimes escape the confines of science. Nield takes the example of the recent Indian Ocean tsunami to explain how the whole endeavor of science is itself a supercontinent, whose usefulness in saving human lives, and life on Earth, depends crucially on a freedom to explore the unknown.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191360 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
Ted Nield tells the fascinating story of how the world has been made – and re-made – through billions of years of geological time. Geology underpins everything, yet the history of the continents on which we live has remained almost neglected. Nield has put this right with his imaginative and dynamic account of the movements of plates, and the assembly of the familiar world from an unfamiliar past.
--Richard Fortey, author of Earth: An Intimate History (20071130)

'The four dimensional complexities of our happy little planet - "earth's immeasurable surprise" - are made elegantly accessible by Ted Nield in this truly exceptional book. At least until the next major discovery it deserves to become the standard work, ideal for students of the subject, and hugely enjoyable to those for whom the world remains an unfathomable enigma.
--Simon Winchester (20071006)

For centuries, people have dreamed of lost continents. Today, the author of this fascinating book shows, geologists can detect evidence of a continuing cycle of formation, breakup and reformation of one giant landmass--a supercontinent--over billions of years. Nield, editor of Geoscientist magazine, imagines what these supercontinents might have looked like and tells the stories of the scientists who have discovered and studied them...Making highly technical material understandable, Nield explains why "the Earth's Supercontinent Cycle matters to everyone, everywhere." (Publishers Weekly 20071201)

Both informative and entertaining. [Nield] has thought well outside any academic box, touching on a huge diversity of topics...Nield relates many subjects that are currently major foci of research in Earth history to his theme.
--Kevin Burke (Science 20071230)

One of the best popularizations of geology...Giv[es] us a sense of the ancient yet powerful forces underneath us.
--P. D. Smith (The Guardian 20071004)

A fascinating and eye-opening book...In a most engaging way, Nield reveals how science has unraveled the complex evolution of our planet's surface, and presents the reader with a tantalizing glimpse of the Earth of the distant future. (BBC Focus )

A book that examines the romance of its subject alongside its hard science... If you don't know much about how the planet's crust works, Nield's book will teach you the basics...He rocks.
--Helen Brown (Daily Telegraph )

An accessible account of how the Earth has several times consisted of a single island landmass and will again, in about 250 million years.
--Peter Calamai (Toronto Star )

As a geologist turned science journalist, editor and provocative blogger, Ted Nield has a complex view of life and science. His skills as a writer successfully convey in Supercontinent the recent exciting work in grand-scale geoscience to a wide scientific audience...The attempted reconstructions of past and future continents and oceans is a major field of activity in contemporary geoscience. To handle it without oversimplification or getting lost in a maze of detail is no small accomplishment.
--David Oldroyd (Nature )

About the Author
Ted Nield is Editor of Geoscientist magazine, and Science and Communications Officer, Geological Society of London.

Customer Reviews

The Grand Quadrille
"Did the Earth move for you?", asks the voice beside you. Well, yes. Because that's what it does. All the time. The continent you live on used to be someplace else, and far away from where it is now. Your home ground has even been part of a greater landmass known as a "supercontinent" - and will be again. Hence, the title of this book. Ted Nield provides us with a fine account of how we came to learn about these movements. He has brought together the years of research tracking where the rocks have been and where they are likely to go. He likens the movement of continents to a dance of landforms - a "Grand Quadrille". A fine synopsis of the history of geology and its compelling figures - scholars who had to project what was known in their time back into a distant past.

Earth has been a busy place for the past four billion years, and it hasn't stopped to rest. We speak of the "firmness of the Earth", but that phrase is a sham. The key figure in this story is the great supercontinent of Pangaea that began breaking up 250 million years ago. Assembled from previous continents that had once joined and also separated, Pangaea's breakup into places we live on today have been traced in exquisite detail. The matching of rocks in places separated by wide seas provided the clues. In fact, as Nield relates, it was the vast Atlantic that bears the responsibility for Pangaea's fracturing to form the basis for the continents we know today. The author explains how the continents have been engaging in a Grand Quadrille and will continue to do so - for another five billion years, at least.

The progenitor of the idea of "drifting continents" was Alfred Wegener. Using maps to show how western Eurasia and Africa matched the east coasts of the Western Hemisphere, Wegener proposed they had once been joined, but had pulled apart. He couldn't provide a mechanism for the movement, and his idea was rejected - most notably by the geologic "establishment" of the United States. Rejection of the proposal was so strong there that one British geologist described it as "regarding the Declaration of Independence as retroactive to the Palaeozoic". Continents formed separately and remained so through time, it was thought.

However, one US dissident, Reginald Daly of Harvard, had been in South Africa, encountering the work of Alexander du Toit, who noted similarities in rocks of the Great Karoo and South America. That discovery, enhanced by some detailed measurements in Greenland, suggested that movement was occurring. It took a war and the hunt for submarines to reveal what prompted continental movement. An Irish geophysicist, John Joly had already postulated the mechanism, heat from radioactive elements deep in the Earth required escape. That venting pushed the softer areas in the Earth's crust around. Sitting atop that stirring material, the continents track the flow patterns of the heat.

In moving, the continents encounter each other, joining, fusing and establishing mighty landmasses that break up again. Nield skilfully describes the mechanisms and the people who have read the rocks to understand how they work. Beyond Pangaea, for example, the author cites the work of Mark McMenamin, who proposes a yet older supercontinent, Rodinia. Rodinia's importance in the history of the Earth is that it was probably the extant landform around which complex life, after over 3 billion years, finally emerged. Nield's skill in presenting all these complex ideas and their significance never wanes throughout the book. He's achieved a fine summary of the history of modern geology, supported by a collection of portraits and some line drawings. The emphasis on Pangaea is slightly overdone, but his pointer to Chris Scotese's web page of geologic ages more than overcomes that small limitation. An excellent overview. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Interesting, but somewhat unfocused
Ted Nield's book Supercontinent was very interesting, and I am glad I tackled it. However, it was not entirely what I expected. At least half the book delves back into the history of "lost continents," including Madame Blavatsky with her Lemuria, and James Churchward with his Mu. These were both bogus prehistoric continents put together by erstwhile self-styled prophets. Neither had any scientific underpinning. This seemed out of place in a science book.

Nield also spends several chapters going back to retrace the development of the continental drift theory, and includes a lot of biographical information. I could have dispensed with this.

There are some pluses to the book. For one thing, Nield writes very well. Chapters devoted exclusively to the supercontinent cycle from a scientific perspective are very interesting and worthwhile. Moreover, the book is new, just having been released in 2007. Lastly, the introduction and last chapter are both excellent essays on the benefits and promise of science, and deserve to be read even if nothing else.

My final viewpoint is -- the book is an excellent place to skip around. Read a chapter carefully, skim some material, read another chapter, skip some things, and so on. This is because the topic "supercontinent" is used by Nield as a kind of peg to hang things on. Much of it is scientific, some of it is just "odds and ends." For instance, what Madame Blavatsky and James Churchward have to do with anything scientific is beyond me.

All in all, a mixed bag.

I've never found geology so fun!
A great resource for the geological history of the planet for the interested amateur. Nield explains in easy to understand terms and analogies the complicated science that allows us today to "travel" back over 4 billion years and witness the development (and redevelopment) of the earth. He also subtly points out the difference between science and myth and why humanity must embrace reality and abandon myths that do not reflect the reality of our situation here on Earth today. He appeals for us to be reasonable and abandon our arrogance and ignorance! Powerful, educational, and ever more important in a world being pushed closer and closer to the brink (for us, the earth will abide...)