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The study of natural history is the study of how the world has changed but Earth itself is in a constant state of flux -- because the ground beneath your feet is always moving. So if we want to know how we got here, we have to understand how "here" got here.

Thanks to Nathan E. Rogers, Julio Lacerda, Franz Anthony and Studio 252mya for their illustrations. You can find more of their work here: https://252mya.com/licensing

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References:
http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocume... → Hess’s first paper proposing seafloor spreading
http://courses.washington.edu/ess502/... → Vine and Matthews’s first description of mirrored magnetic anomalies
https://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/eens... → Class notes from Stephen Nelson @ Tulane on the history of discovery and mechanisms of plate tectonics
http://www.indiana.edu/~g105lab/1425c... → Additional rundown on the mechanisms of plate tectonics
http://www.whoi.edu/sbl/liteSite.do?l... → Biography of Marie Tharp
http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/oct2... → review article of pre-pangaean continents
doi:10.1038/ngeo1069 → Paper linking the P-Tr extinction to Siberian Traps volcanism lighting coal on fire
http://dx.doi.org/10.1144/SP326.4 → Very solid reconstructions of Rodinia and Pannotia
https://www.le.ac.uk/gl/ads/SiberianT... → review of the potential and probable causes of the PTr extinction, as well as some discussion linking the TrJ extinction to the rifting of North America away from Pangaea
http://science.sciencemag.org/content... → TrJ extinction linked with North American rifting
https://web.archive.org/web/200804131... → Future continents
   • Continental Drift: 3.3 Billion Years   → Basic animation of continental movements
   • 300 Million Years of the Future World...   → Animation of Pangaea Ultima (although video called it Pangaea Proxima for some reason)
https://books.google.com/books?id=apA...
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/...
https://people.earth.yale.edu/sites/d...
http://science.psu.edu/news-and-event...