Solved cryptogram
The continents are still moving, at about the speed your fingernails grow, and they always have.
Earth Science Facts, sourced to U.S. Geological Survey.
What it means
Plate motion runs to a few centimeters a year, which sounds negligible until you multiply it by geological time. At that rate the Atlantic has opened from nothing over the past two hundred million years. Satellite positioning now measures the drift directly rather than inferring it, and the observed rates match the ones worked out decades earlier from magnetic stripes on the sea floor.
The claim comes from U.S. Geological Survey, and the page it comes from was read on 2026-08-27 to confirm it still says this.
This is not the kind of claim that goes out of date, which is why it was set as a puzzle rather than a fact with a shelf life.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 78 letters over 21 different ones, graded hard.
- SourceU.S. Geological Survey
- CollectionEarth Science Facts
- Difficultyhard
- Length78 letters, 21 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- U.S. Geological Surveymedium, 74 letters
- U.S. Geological Surveymedium, 78 letters
- U.S. National Park Servicehard, 72 letters
- NASAmedium, 82 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.