Around 425 million years ago, the ancient land masses of Laurentia and Eastern Avalonia drifted into each other, fusing Scotland and England together in what has been described as a “gentle collision”. 

For most of the last billion years, both countries were separated by the ancient Iapetus Ocean, with Scotland was joined as one landmass to what would become North America and Greenland.

Now it appears that Scotland may once again separate from England in 250 million years' time - when scientists predict that all continents will converge to form Earth's next supercontinent, Pangaea Ultima, also known as Pangaea Proxima.

The hypothesis, first credited to American geologist and paleogeographer Christopher R. Scotese, uses a computer algorithm to simulate the mechanisms that move the plates -  such as where ridges in the ocean floor tear the ocean floor apart and move continents away from one another - in order to figure out the eventual location of continents.

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Forming as a result of the subduction of the ocean floor of the North and South Atlantic beneath eastern North America and South America, Dr Scotese predicted that The Atlantic Ocean may widen, Africa will collide with Europe closing the Mediterranean, Australia would swing up into China and the Americas would close in on Africa. 

The idea of ​​this massive land union has gone viral thanks to a map shared on Reddit's MapPorn subreddit, which takes Dr Scotese’s results as inspiration to visualise where the current countries will be located on the supercontinent of the future.

The map shows that almost all countries will have created new borders after uniting into a gigantic mass of land, surrounded by water in the form of a remnant of the Indian Ocean. 

The Herald: How Earth will look like in 250 million years, according to the map.How Earth will look like in 250 million years, according to the map. (Image: Reddit/MapPorn)

Only three territorial areas will remain isolated; Chukotka (Russia's most northeastern territory), New Zealand and Scotland.

Responding to the map, Professor Randell Stephenson of the University of Aberdeen’s School of Geosciences, expressed his opinion that the country boundaries may have been drawn on “with some artistic licence”.

He told The Herald: “The original models of how the Earth might look in 250 Ma are based on consensus ideas about plate tectonics, which are almost universal among Earth scientists, and the original model itself (without countries) was prepared by an eminent, highly respected, expert in the field. There are big uncertainties of course and the work was done as kind of thought experiment’ for scientific fun rather than something scientifically rigorous.”

The Herald: Map shows Scotland separating from England when the new supercontinent formsMap shows Scotland separating from England when the new supercontinent forms (Image: Reddit/MapPorn)

In respect of Scotland being separated from England in the prediction, Prof Stephenson said it is unclear as to whether it is purely “a bit of mischief” added to the countries map by the person who produced it or is indeed part of the original “seriously constructed” model.

He added: “There are two plausible geological concepts that are relevant to this: Supercontinents (like the future Pangaea Proxima) in the geological past have tended to break up by fragments rifting away from the distal leading edge of the continent, such as where Scotland lies on the model, so it perhaps was in the modeller’s mind to introduce this bit of separation as an element of the next phase of Pangaea Proxima’s further evolution (beyond 250 Ma in the future) as it starts to break up again.

“Probably the most interesting thing in this regard is that the crust of present Great Britain comprises segments of two distinct tectonic plates that were joined together about 400 Ma ago. The “suture” between these plates lies in the area of southern Scotland-northern England, with Scotland’s crust being the same as what is now found in Canada/Greenland and England’s crust being the same as what is now found in France and north-central Europe. 

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“Most geologists believe that tectonic “sutures” like this one are retained in the Earth’s upper layer (say 100-200 km thick) as relatively weak zones, sometimes called “mantle scars”,  that might localise where continental break-up will occur in future tectonic cycles.”

It seems unlikely, however, that humans will be around to witness Scotland separate from England if it were to happen in 250 million years. 

In September last year, scientists from the University of Bristol used the first-ever supercomputer climate models of the distant future to predict how climate extremes will intensify after the world’s continents merge to form Pangaea Ultima, and found that much of the new super continent will experience temperatures of higher than 40°C, making it uninhabitable to most mammalian life. 

Alexander Farnsworth, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Bristol and one of the authors of the study, said: “When you see a supercontinent forming, it predisposes the environment or the climate to become more fragile for species, more towards these tipping points that can push big extinction events to occur.”