Is it true that much of the land we stand on today was once under water?

Question

I think I once saw a video in a science class about the change in our land rising and then going back under water since the begining of Earth. Has anyone seen this video? What is this process called? Do they think that the land we walk on today will one day be under water as well? What will we do then?

Answer 1

Possibly; the world is big. Some places used to be deserts and some used to be oceans.

Answer 2

Yes some of the land we walk ontoday was submerged, and formed underwater. The rocks formed underwater are called sedimentary rock, and result from the settling and compressing of the debris in the oceans. They are now above land due to the uplift of the ground . This uplift is the result of the movement of tectonic plates and their compression and collision into eachother. (try squeezing a sponge from the two ends and you will see it becomes thicker at the middle, this is an example of uplift). All land (above and below sea level) is in movement due to the continual creation of new crust and the destruction of the earths crust (a bit like a conveyor belt), There is much more to this, some universities will teach this as an entire course....so theres only so much that can be put in one answer. To answer your last question, if some of the land we walk on today subsides and goes underwater....there will probably have been new land created for us to walk on. This is a process which takes millions of years

Answer 3

The process is called uplift and subsidence. The earth's surface is very slowly but continually changing. For instance, the Los Angeles Basin, where millions of people now live, was once completely submerged and underwater. Now parts of it are hundreds of feet above sea level. The entire central portion of the United States was an inland sea under water. hundreds of millions of years ago. As far as what will we do when todays land is underwater, most likely we won't be here, or if we still are we will have moved to where land is.

Answer 4

How can we be so certain that the continents were joined. It seems more plausible to me that the entire earth was covered in water and then much of it receded and created the first continents. When landmasses disspears over the eons they are submerged or partially submerged creating new lands once underwater. Maybe there are more landmasses that have yet to be discovered which are not directly connected with the surface world....i.e....admyral byrds flight log 2300 miles beyond the pole and what he astonishingly describes as paradise with lush green vegitation and mountainous regions beyond the north and south barren wilderness. Landmasses that would be comparable to discovering another world about 3/4 land and 1/4 water not like what we are used to with 1/4 land and 3/4 water. The next logical step in evolution

Answer 5

Yes this is true, if you didn't sleep in science class (and I know you didn't :P) then you should know that earth started out as Pangaea, a huge land form that shifted over millions of years. This is called Plate Tectonics. And yes the earth is still changing, you just don't notice it :) Hope this helps

Answer 6

I live in a valley formed by a river that was formed by a glacier. This land used to be under ice, and then it was under water.

Answer 7

I'm not too sure about that. But I know there is plate techtonics. Hmmm. Now that I think of it, it does actually make sense that all the continents were actually one large land mass.

Answer 8

infact all the land was joint earlier rather than different continents...they are moving apart as the time passing due to the some scientific issue im not getting right term on that right now

Answer 9

do you know the story of Noah? it flooded for forty days.so the land we are standing now was once under water.and also after the tsunami,places that had been hit was once under water.

Answer 10

The entire earth was once a complete waterwold. All there was were oceans.