You don’t normally hear continents described as speedy, but it’s now clear that some are much faster than others. India, in particular, is the Ferrari of continents and now, scientists have discovered why.

Rewind 150 million years and the Earth looked very different. Most of the land in today’s southern hemisphere were united in a single super-continent called Gondwana, including Africa, Australia, South America, Antarctica, India and Arabia.

The Earth’s crust is not a stationary shell but an ever-shifting mosaic of tectonic plates that constantly (albeit slowly) reshape the face of the planet. Underneath the crust lies the much hotter mantle, and plumes of super-heated rock occasionally erupt out of this layer, causing hotspots of volcanic activity.

Geologists believe