And many of the enduring rivers we’re familiar with now were formed through the tedious, steady process of erosion.Ī new computer model described this week in the journal Science offers a detailed view of how much the surface of our planet has morphed over the past 100 million years. Earth’s mountain ranges didn’t appear overnight, but rose gradually after the collision of tectonic plates. Hundreds of millions of years had to pass for the continents to split apart, creating the seven land masses we know today. But most large-scale changes take far longer to manifest than we’ll ever witness in our lifetimes. Earth’s landscape has always been in flux.
