Pangaea Proxima is a possible future supercontinent configuration. In keeping with the supercontinent cycle, Pangaea Proxima could form within the next 250 million years. This potential configuration, hypothesized by Christopher Scotese in November 1982, earned its name from its similarity to the ancient Pangaea supercontinent. Scotese later changed Pangaea Ultima to Pangaea Proxima because the name Ultima could imply that it would be the last supercontinent. The model was derived from extrapolation of past cycles of formation and breakup of supercontinents, not from theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of tectonic change, which are too imprecise to be projected that far into the future. "It's all pretty much fantasy to start with," Scotese has said. "But it's a fun exercise to think about what might happen. And you can only do it if you have a really clear idea of why things happen in the first place."