Past plate movements
Reconstruction of past movements of plates - one of the main subjects of geological research. With varying degrees of detail the position of continents and blocks, from which they were formed, reconstructed until the Archean.
An analysis of movements of the continents was made an empirical observation that the continents once every 400-600 million years collected a huge continent, which contained almost all of continental crust - the supercontinent. Modern continents were formed 200-150 million years ago, as a result of the split the supercontinent Pangaea. Now the continent is on stage nearly the maximum separation. The Atlantic Ocean is expanding, and the Pacific Ocean closed. Indian subcontinent moving northward and crushes the Eurasian plate, but, apparently, a resource of this movement is almost exhausted, and soon the geological time in the Indian Ocean be a new subduction zone where oceanic crust of the Indian Ocean will be absorbed by the Indian continent.