Well if we just assume for a moment, that three fourths of the Earths crust was ripped away as suggested, then it's logical to conclude that the hydrosphere or ocean sitting on top of this crust would also have been taken with it.
The current depth of our ocean is approximately 2 miles in depth, however if we add the missing three fourths that disappeared with the Earths crust, the actual depth of our ocean would be closer to 8 miles deep.
“Why didn’t life develop on land?”… Quite simply put, there was no land for it to develop on!
To understand how life suddenly appeared on land 400 million years ago, we don’t need to analyse palaeontology, or even botany and biology. We simply need to have a basic understanding of planetary physics.
One of the principles of physics is the Conservation of Angular Momentum (CAM). The example most commonly used when explaining CAM, is that of an ice skater. Everyone is familiar with the image of a figure skater on ice spinning on the spot, getting faster and faster until they just become a spinning blur. If you watch them closely, you may also notice that they achieve this increased acceleration in speed by drawing their arms in closer and closer to the centre of their body. The CAM principle states, “As a rotating body reduces its distance from the axis of rotation, it must rotate ever faster to conserve angular momentum”.
In our example, the spinning ice skater draws in their arms, reducing the distance around their axis, forcing them to spin faster and faster. At the end of the movement the skater flings out their arms bringing them to a sudden stop, or slowing them down.
This exact same principle holds true of planetary mass. When our planet was in its infancy some four and a half billion years ago, it was comprised mostly of molten rock and metal spinning around the sun in space. As this material began to cool, it also began to shrink in size, just as any cooling material does.
This cooling and shrinking effectively reduced the distance around the equator of our planet, and just like in our example of the ice skater drawing in their arms, the Conservation of Angular Momentum forced our planet to revolve and spin increasingly faster.
Over million and millions of years, this ever increasing speed at which the Earth was spinning, built up greater and greater centrifugal force, placing massive pressure around the equator of the Earth, rather like when you spin on a roundabout at the playground. The further to the edge of the roundabout you get, the greater the pressure is forcing you outwards.
This colossal pressure forced the Earth to become slightly oblate in shape and bloated around the middle. Other planets like Jupiter and Saturn and even the Sun itself are also oblate for the same reason, they spin extremely fast.
Baring in mind that the inner layers of the Earth are far denser than those towards the surface, the lighter layers on the outer surface of the Earth began to slide out towards the equator. As this happens, the crust begins to squash and crunch up as the pressure forces it outwards, forming a ridge of mountains right around the Earths fattest point. These types of mountain formations are known as geosynclines.
Example: Imagine if you will a large metal ball. If you were to cover the surface of the ball in an even layer of soft modelling clay, and then spin the ball on the spot at a very fast speed, the clay would begin slide out to the equator and form a ridge. Substitute the metal ball for the denser core of the Earth, and the soft clay for the Earths crust and the principle is the same.
As the Earths crust was forced further and further out the Geosyncline Mountains it created grew ever higher until the peeks, almost 8 miles high, began to emerge above the surface of the very deep ocean.
It was very soon after that land appeared above the waves, that an explosion of life began to emerge on land, ending the Devonian period and beginning the Carboniferous age. Giant redwoods, ferns and pines burst forth in wondrous variety, creating dense rain forests that literally covered this band of mountains around the equator.
As this vegetation grew and died, thick layers of peat formed on the ground, which over time became thicker and more compressed until eventually if turned into coal. In fact so much coal has formed since then that these rich coal deposits are today several miles thick.
This helps us piece things together very nicely, as today, wherever you find narrow strips of geosyncline mountains and large coal deposits, it marks the locations around the world were the original tropical rain forests first existed, i.e. along the true, original equator in the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic periods.
Using this information it is then easy to see that modern day theories of the original position of Pangaea could quite easily be inaccurate. They don't tie in with the position of the geosynclines mountains and coal deposits as being along the equator at all. If however the maps of Pangaea are rotated clockwise 45 degrees as we have previously suggested, then not only do you patch the matching hole created by the Tethys Sea, but the geosyncline mountains and coal deposits begin to line up with what would have been the Earths true equator, and everything begins to make a lot more sense.
Another thing that happens as the Earth spins faster and faster, is that gravity at the Earths surface changes quite dramatically. Imagine a lady in a fancy ball gown spinning on the spot. As she spins the trim of her skirt floats upwards and outwards, almost as if it is lighter than air. Like with our roundabout example earlier, the further you get from the centre, the grater the force is pushing you away.
What this meant for life on Earth was that animals on the surface of our planet experienced less gravitational weight. Like superman they would have been able to leap buildings in a single bound, and lift huge boulders with relative ease, and because there was far less pressure forcing them back down to Earth it allowed them and the plant life around them, to grow to gigantic sizes.
Now coming back to our example of the steal ball covered in soft clay, if you spin the ball faster and faster eventually the clay will slide out to the equator so much that eventually a huge chunk will fly off, and like the skater flinging out their arms, the metal ball will suddenly reduce the speed at which it is spinning.
Remember the missing continental SIAL? Well if we refer back to our metal ball example we can see exactly where it went. As the Earth cooled down and shrank, it started to spin faster and faster. The Geosyncline Mountains forced out to the equator and rose up above the deep oceans. Life on land then began evolving over millions of years, until eventually the Earth span so fast that three fourths of its outer surface, the SIAL, flew off into space.
The Earths crust flew off into space with so much spinning energy, that the angular momentum would have soon shaped this mass into a spinning sphere of its own, spiralling outwards into space.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves at this point, it’s probably best that we substantiate some of these extreme theories with a little evidence.
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