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This presentation describes the plate tectonic development of the continents and ocean basins during the past 750 million years. It was given by Chris Scotese at the retirement symposium of Rob Van der Voo, at the University of Michigan on August 27, 2015. The talk describes how the "Plate Tectonics" flip book was produced (see also XXXX). The flipbook consists of 34 plate tectonic reconstructions that map the past location of subduction zones (barbed lines), mid-ocean ridges, (dashed lines), and collision zones (marked by x's). The tectonic reconstructions are based on the global plate tectonic model developed by the PALEOMAP Project.
The latitudinal orientation of the continents is derived largely from paleomagnetic data collected by Professor van der Voo (van der Voo, 1993). Hot spots tracks and sea floor spreading isochrons (Seton et al., 2012) were used to constrain the longitudinal position of the continents back to ~200 million years. Plate tectonic reconstructions older than 200 million years are necessarily more speculative and were derived by combining diverse lines of evidence from the tectonic histories of the continents (e.g., timing of continent-continent collisions or ages of rifting), the distribution of paleoclimatic indicators (i.e coals, tillites, salt deposits, and bauxites, see Boucot et al., 2013), and in some cases, the biogeographic affinities of fossil faunas and floras (Lees et al., 2002, Fortey and Cocks, 2003).
Though a diverse data set has been used to produce these reconstructions, this data, in itself, was not enough to do the job. So much time has passed, and so little direct evidence remains, that guidance must also be sought from the "Rules of Plate Tectonics".
The Rules of Plate Tectonics are intuitive. They state that the Earth’s tectonic plates do not move randomly, but rather evolve in a manner that is consistent with the forces that drive them. The principal driving forces are: slab pull, ridge push and trench rollback. Understanding how these forces work provides important insights into how plate boundaries will evolve through time. Simply said, plates will only move if they are pulled back into the mantle by a subducting slab or laterally pushed by a mature ridge system.
In this booklet, the evolving plate boundaries have been drawn to follow this maxim. It is also important to note that plate tectonics is a "catastrophic" system. Though "slow and steady" is the general rule, a major plate tectonic reorganization takes place every 50 – 100 million years. These "plate tectonic catastrophes" most often occur when entire mid-ocean ridges are subducted or when major continents collide. (For a more complete listing of the "Rules of Plate Tectonics", the reader is referred to Scotese (2014). Plate tectonic reorganizations have played an important role in shaping the rock record.
References Cited
Boucot, A.J., Chen Xu, and Scotese, C.R, 2013. Phanerozoic Paleoclimate: An Atlas of Lithologic Indicators of Climate, SEPM Concepts in Sedimentology and Paleontology, No. 11, 478 pp.
Fortey, R.A., and Cocks, L.R.M., 2003. Palaeontological evidence bearing on global Ordovician - Silurian continental reconstructions, Earth-Science Reviews, v. 61, pp. 245-307.
Lees, D., Fortey, R.A., and Cocks, L.R.M., 2002. Quantifying paleogeography using biogeography: a test case for the Ordovician and Silurian of Avalonia based on brachiopods and trilobites, Paleobiology v. 28, pp. 263-279.
Scotese, C.R., 2004. A continental drift flipbook, Journal of Geology, v. 112, issue 6, p. 729-741.
Scotese, C.R., 2014. Plate Tectonics Driving Mechanisms Some Simple Rules that Explain Why the Plates Move the Way They Do,
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Seton, M., Müller, R.D., Zahirovic, S., Gaina, C., Torsvik, T., Shepard, G., Talsma, A., Gurnis, M., Turner, M., Maus, S., and Chandler, M., 2012. Global continental and ocean basin reconstructions since 200 Ma, Earth-Science Reviews, v. 113, p. 212-270.
Van der Voo, R., 1993. Paleomagnetism of the Atlantic, Tethys, and Iapetus Oceans, Cambridge University Press, 411 p.
Please cite this work as:
Scotese, C.R., 2015. The Ultimate PLate Tectonic Flipbook, Van der Voo Retirement Symposium, August 26 -27, Ann Arbor, MI.
