At one point in the history of the Earth, the land was pulled toward the equator. The shift was so great, it was like Boston being pulled down to the equator. Then the land moved back again!
Adam Maloof, an associate professor of geosciences at Princeton University, explained in an NPR interview that this massive shift happened 800 million years ago at a rate about 20 inches (50 centimeters) a day, which is breakneck speed in geology. That’s five times as fast as the Earth’s crust is shifting today.
He explained that the globe shifts its weight toward the equator to maintain equilibrium as it rotates. Maloof said that the crust is literally sliding: “The core of the Earth, the outer part, is actually fluid iron, and it has about the viscosity of water.”
Earth's layers. About 800 million years ago, the crust slid more than 1,600 miles (2,700 kilometers) on the fluid iron core. Shutterstock*
