Thread by @MiningNS

#NovaScotia's amazing geology got wonderful recognition yesterday with the creation of the Cliffs of Fundy UNESCO Global Geopark!
#NS has not always looked the way it does today...

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@CanadaGeoparks @fundygeopark @TourismNS @VisitNovaScotia @NS_Museum

#NovaScotia is comprised of at least three different continents that came together as a result of tectonic plate movement hundreds of millions of years ago.
The Earth’s surface is made up of a dozen large tectonic plates and a number of smaller ones.
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These plates move imperceptibly - a few centimetres per year - and over the course of millions of years continents and oceans move and change shape.
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The plates pulling apart cause fractures or deep rifts in the Earth’s crust, both on land and under the sea, and plates colliding with each other form mountain ranges and new islands as the rock is forced upwards.
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When all the continents collided 300 million years ago, they formed the supercontinent Pangea, the most recent of a series of supercontinents that have been formed in Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history.
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At that time, the northern half of Nova Scotia was attached to western Europe and the southern half was connected to North Africa.
About 200 million years ago Pangea began to pull apart, creating new land masses, such as Nova Scotia.
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The continents as we know them now look like they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle cuz they were joined at one time.
Much of NS’s geology – its underground physical structure – matches parts of Europe and N. Africa as a result of our connection to those continents so long ago.

Tectonic plate movement has also caused huge changes in Nova Scotia’s climate. At different times over hundreds of millions of years Nova Scotia has been covered in seas, desert and several kilometres of ice!
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Nova Scotia was much closer to the equator during Pangea and it had very little rain (maybe just once or twice a year) and summers were about 20 degrees Celsius hotter than they are now.
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Tectonic plate movement continues today and the next supercontinent is predicted to form within the next 250 million years. Nova Scotia – indeed, the whole world – will look very different in millions of years than it does now.
#nspoli #cbpoli #Capebreton #novascotia