So what you're looking at here is continental drift over a period of 600 million years, beginning with the Late Precambrian Era, above, through to the present day, in the penultimate image, below.

That sequence of four images, above, gives us the earth as a kind of northward spray of island arcs and micro-continents, small landmasses moving toward evolutionary isolation.

in the last two images, you can see recognizable landmasses just beginning to form

then, you'll see how and where "one of the largest living structures ever to have existed on Earth" was able to form

The earth from roughly 150 million years ago to 50 million years ago

Then, of course, we hit the present day – pictured below.

Suddenly this arrangement looks rather impermanent.

by Ron Blakey