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How did Rodinia form from the fragments of the earlier supercontinent Columbia?

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Watch Earth's Continents Move — paleogeography Watch a time-lapse of Earth changing through geologic time, from the Cambrian Era to the projected period of Pangea Proxima.

Rodinia formed approximately 1.2 billion years ago through the convergence and collision of continental fragments derived from the earlier supercontinent Columbia (also known as Nuna).

This process was driven by plate-tectonic activity, characterized by a series of mountain-building events known as orogenies that occurred globally between 1.3 billion and 1 billion years ago. These collisions involved the amalgamation of various cratons and landmasses into a single, cohesive supercontinent.1

A primary example of this assembly is the Grenville Orogeny, which provides geological evidence of the collision between Laurentia—a craton comprising much of modern North America and Greenland—and other continental landmasses. While many scientific models place Laurentia at the center of Rodinia, the precise orientation and arrangement of the other continents within the supercontinent remain a subject of ongoing geological debate.12