The influence of continental surface area on the assembly time for supercontinents

Abstract

We employ a kinematic numerical model of circular continental blocks moving about randomly on a two‐dimensional periodic model of the Earth's surface and monitor the time required for all of the blocks to assemble into a single model supercontinent. We examine the sensitivity of the assembly times of our model supercontinents to the size of individual continental blocks, the fraction of the model Earth=s surface covered by the continents and the degree of continental deformation that occurs upon collision. Assembly times are found to be most sensitive to the total continental surface area. We show that in the absence of any dynamic effects due to deep mantle flow, continents of present‐day scale moving randomly about the Earth's surface would naturally aggregate into a single mass in approximately 0.4 Gy.