Subduction Zone Found Off Coast of Portugal

First sign of the eventual closing of the Atlantic Ocean

If Christopher Columbus had been willing to wait just a few hundred million years, he could have simply walked to the New World.

That's because geological forces are slowly tuggingEurope toward the Americas, with an estimated time of arrival of about 220 million years from now. 

In a study published in the current issue of the journal Geology, a team led by researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, say that they have discovered the first signs of the eventual closing of theAtlantic Ocean, in the form of an "embryonic" subduction zone off the coast of Portugal.