Talk:List of supercontinents

Query

hi

Someone had put Manchester as a super continent obviously a piece of vandalism I have changed this to oceania whic I believe to be true however could do with some verification on this and the age in MYA as Im no expert and do not have time to research —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.217.252 (talk) 11:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Removed the speculative future stuff. If it is to be replaced, it must be supported by WP:reliable sources. Vsmith (talk) 01:58, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

How can Gondwana have been around from 510-180mya when Pangaea was around from 300-200mya? This is saying that Gondwana formed before Pangaea. Gondwana and Laurasia formed from the break up of Pangaea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.187.50 (talk) 17:04, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Ocean-Eurasia

What is this? Do we have any source for this 'supercontinent'? 113.111.11.226 (talk) 06:04, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I have never heard of that. I guess it is a supercontinent comprised of modern-day Eurasia and Oceania combined. 2001:8003:9008:1301:AD8D:2348:2B9E:213C (talk) 12:38, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

It was an unsourced IP spam edit in 2015. If you google Ocean-Eurasia, you can't find a single entry containing Ocean-Eurasia. I have deleted it from the table. Kenwick (talk) 10:30, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Article Improvement or Deletion is Needed

No sources. I have no reason to view this as credible. Improvement by citing sources would be best. If that does not happen, this article should be deleted. RobertLovesPi (talk) 17:37, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I do agree. The article is sloopy and need way much work to be presentable. -Lappspira (talk) 17:43, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

The assignment of each entry in the lists to "major" supercontinent or "minor" supercontinent without citing any source references looks like probable original research, (which is not allowed on Wikipedia). Therefore, I have put a "possible original research" template at the top of the article. GeoWriter (talk) 19:07, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Future supercontinents

@ZaperaWiki44: While I think this cleanup is a good idea, I would support keeping Amasia, Pangea Ultima and Novopangea separate. These are actual different concepts (with scientific referecnes) that are not synonymous. (Pangea Ultima suggests clousre of the Atlantic, Novopangea of the Pacific, and Amasia of the Arctic ocean.) --MGChecker (talk) 16:20, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Question

What was the name of the supercontinent comprised of the Americas and Afro-Eurasia which were connected by Beringia approx. 15,000 years ago? 2001:8003:9008:1301:AD8D:2348:2B9E:213C (talk) 12:32, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

America-Eurafrasia or Afro-Eurasia-America. Kenwick (talk) 12:49, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

This list is a mess. There are no clear inclusion criteria and a distinct lack of sourcing.

I propose that to be included in this list, a supercontinent needs to backed by reliable sources using that specific term and preferably being listed in multiple sources. There is also the term "supercraton", which is a piece of continental crust containing more than one craton and some of the ones listed at the moment are of that type. Unless anyone objects, I will soon start to implement this proposal. Note that the definition of a supercontinent is anything but clear at the moment, with new ideas appearing all the time, so this may not be simple - we'll just have to look at them on a case-by-case basis. Mikenorton (talk) 20:27, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

For now, I suggest removing all supercratons that are not named by reliable sources as also supercontinents. Since there is some uncertainty what constitutes a supercontinent, I'd suggest requiring no less than two independent reliable sources for listing a supercontinent. I think that takes Avalonia and Zealandia out of the list immediately, but I'll let the subject matter experts take a crack at this first.

This implies putting a "citation needed" on everything that does not already have two reliable independent sources, and removing those relatively soon if no one comes up with the supporting sources. In fact, I think I'll go through that exercise right now. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 20:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Naw, thought better of it. If the listed item goes to a Wiki article whose lead calls it a supercontinent, that needs to be fixed first. I'll stick with just removing items that aren't described as supercontinents in their Wiki article. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 21:12, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like a good start - we can go from there. Mikenorton (talk) 21:18, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Done. I left one supercraton as borderline -- do what you will with it. But the other issue is the list of "current supercontinents", which I find highly dubious. Thoughts? --Kent G. Budge (talk) 21:20, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I deleted them, as I believe that there no currently accepted supercontinents. Anyway, if sources do turn up we can always add them back. As to "minor supercontinents", that seems a bit like a "minor megathrust" or a "minor supervolcano". It does not seem to be a term that is used very often and I think that we should drop the distinction. Mikenorton (talk) 22:54, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Merge back into the Supercontinent article?

As we bring this article down to a size that is supported by the sources, it strikes me that we are simply recreating the list that's already in the supercontinent article. This may end ups as simply a redirect. Mikenorton (talk) 22:57, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Agree. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 00:16, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Agree with this as well. There are still a few on the list that probably aren't supercontinents by any of the potentially accepted defintions which are still not at consensus, Merdith et al. 2019 gives the best overview of this. Proto-Gondwana, proto-Laurasia, Sclavia, and even Laurasia aren't generally treated as supercontinents by most defintions or considered supercontinents in the research papers I've read. Jarred C Lloyd (talk) 10:56, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

OK after two weeks and no objections, I'm doing the redirect. Mikenorton (talk) 12:20, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

While it sounds like the decision has been made, I'll throw in one final supporting observation that I already made elsewhere: List articles makde sense when there are many items in the list. There are only a limited number of supercontinents supported by geologic research, and having a separate list simply invites mischief. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 15:59, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree and disagree. --Alemania 226 (talk) 14:00, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree and disagree with this measure. The article can be redirected to supercontinents but the information should not be deleted because if there is important data, perhaps the name of the article could be changed, such as the list of continents and microcontinents, to avoid losing the information since it is difficult get that information. That is what I would suggest if the article were to be redirected.

Comment. I continue to think that "List of supercontinents" should be a redirect to the "Supercontinents" article. There just aren't that many genuine supercontinents for which there is credible evidence in the geologic record, so the list fits very comfortably within the article. Having it separate invites finding excuses to expand it beyond the credible evidence.

However, I could get behind a "List of continents in the geologic record". This could very plausibly include supercontinents, continents, and microcontinents, and that list would be long enough to be useful. And the "in the geologic record" would exclude poorly-sourced (how could it be otherwise?) speculation about future supercontinents. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 03:50, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

We do have a paleocontinent article that I created as a small stub 7 years ago and then completely forgot about. It's currently completely dominated by Gondwana, Laurussia and Pangaea, leaving it very unbalanced in my view. A list of paleocontinents seems very plausible and could be created hand in hand with a complete rewrite of the paleocontinent article. Mikenorton (talk) 16:08, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I like this better than "List of continents in the geologic record", which is a slightly clunky name. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 16:55, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I've looked around for sources and come up with about 45 that are referred to as "paleocontinents" at least occasionally - see Talk:Paleocontinent#Unbalanced. They could be ordered alphabetically or by age of first evidence of their existence, the first is simpler as it's less prone to tinkering by well-meaning editors, but the second is more logical (or geological perhaps). Mikenorton (talk) 12:17, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I've seen lists where readers could choose the ordering they like, though I've never built one or looked at the Wikicode for one. That would defuse the issue entirely. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 15:07, 13 November 2020 (UTC)