Rodinia breaks apart
The supercontinent splits, and the rifting may have tipped the planet into its deepest ice age.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 50 million years
- Known to
- ± 50 million years
- Era
- Neoproterozoic, Proterozoic
Rifting fragments Rodinia from roughly 800 to 750 million years ago. Vast new coastlines and freshly exposed basalt accelerate chemical weathering, which draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere — a plausible trigger for the Snowball Earth glaciations that follow within a few tens of millions of years. The fragments eventually reassemble as Gondwana.