Paleogeography Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This "flipbook", which illustrates the plate tectonic development of the continents and ocean basins during the past 750 million years, was assembled to commemorate the scientific career of Professor Rob van der Voo. 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 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 (xref). 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 have been 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 case, the biogeographic affinities of fossil faunas and floras.
Though a diverse data has been used to produce these reconstructions, this data, itself, is not enough. So much time has passed and so little direct evidence is preserved that guidance must also be sought from the "Rules of Plate Tectonics".
Plates do not move randomly but 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. These forces shape the plates and provide important insights into how plate boundaries will evolve. Simply said, plates will only move if they are pulled by a subducting slab or pushed by the forces exerted by a mature ridge system. 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, once every hundred million years or so, a major plate tectonic reorganization occurs. These "plate tectonic catastrophes" most often occur when 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 XXXXXX.
The first "continental drift" flipbook was pushed as an undergraduate research project (Scotese, 1974; 1975abc). Subsequent editions have followed (1976ab; 1978; 1979; 1980; 1990, 1991, 1997, 2004). A more complete description of the data and information that is used to produce the flipbooks can be found in Scotese (2004). These maps could not have been produced without the GPlates plate modelling software and the tectonic data sets published by Dietmar Müller and his team at Earthbytes.
Special thanks to Maggie Geiger, and Robert and Jonathan Scotese for their help assembling this flipbook.

Time Scale
The age given next to each map represents age in millions of years. The corresponding geological ages (Ogg et al., 2008) are:
0 Modern World
20 Ma Early Miocene
40 Ma late Middle Eocene
60 Ma Paleocene
80 Ma Late Cretaceous - Campanian
100 Ma Early Cretaceous - late Albian
120 Ma Early Cretaceous - early Aptian
140 Ma Early Cretaceous - Berriasian
160 Ma Late Jurassic - Oxfordian
180 Ma Early Jurassic - Toarcian
200 Ma Triassic/Jurassic boundary
220 Ma Late Triassic - Carnian
240 Ma Middle Triassic - Anisian
260 Ma Middle Permian - Capitanian
280 Ma Early Permian - Artinskian
300 Ma Late Pennsylvanian
320 Ma Late Mississippian
340 Ma Middle Mississippian
360 Ma Devono-Carboniferous
380 Ma Late Devonian - Frasnian
400 Ma Early Devonian - Emsian
420 Ma Late Silurian - Ludlow
440 Ma Early Silurian - Llandovery
460 Ma Middle Ordovician
480 Ma Early Ordovician
500 Ma Late Cambrian
520 Ma Middle Cambrian
540 Ma Cambrian-Precambrian
560 Ma Neoproterozoic - lt. Ediacaran
600 Ma Neoporterozoic - m. Ediacaran
630 Ma Neoproterozoic - e. Ediacaran
660 Ma Neoproterozoic - e. Ediacaran
690 Ma Neoproterozoic - lt. Cryogenian
720 Ma m. Cryogenian
750 Ma m. Cryogenian

References Cited

Ogg, J., Ogg, G., and Gradstein, F.M., 2008. The Concise Geologic Time Scale, Cambridge University Press, 177 p.
Scotese, C.R. 1974. First Flip Book Images (from 35mm film from PLATO System), Unpublished.
Scotese, C.R., and Baker, D.W., 1975a. Continental drift reconstructions and animation, Journal of Geological Education, 23: 167-171.
Scotese, C.R., 1975b. Continental Drift Flip Book, 1stedition.Chicago, Illinois. (single page version

Scotese, C.R., 1975c. Continental Drift Flip Book, 1st edition. Chicago, Illinois. (double page version)
Scotese, C.R., 1976a. Continental
Drift “Flip Book”, edition 1.5, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Illinois. ResearchGate Academia
Scotese, C.R., 1976b. A continental drift “flip book", Computers & Geosciences, 2:113-116.
Scotese, C.R., and Ziegler, A.M., 1978. Paleozoic continental drift reconstructions and animation, American Geophysical Union, 1978 Spring Annual Meeting, Eos, v. 59. Issue 4, p. 263.
Scotese, C.R., 1979. Continental Drift (flip book), 2nd edition.
Scotese, C.R., Snelson, S.S., and Ross, W.C., 1980. A computer animation of continental drift, J. Geomag. Geoelectr., 32: suppl. III, 61-70.
Scotese, C.R., 1990. Atlas of Phanerozoic Plate Tectonic Reconstructions, PALEOMAP Progress 01-1090a, Department of Geology, University of Texas at Arlington, Texas, 57 pp.
Scotese, C.R., 1991. Continental Drift Flip Book, 4th edition, PALEOMAP Project, Arlington, TX, 49 pp.
Scotese, C.R., 1997. Continental Drift Flip Book, 7th edition, PALEOMAP Project, Department of Geology, University of Texas at Arlington, Texas, 80 pp.

Scotese, 2004.
Seton et al., 2012.
Van der Voo, R., 1993. Paleomagnetism of the Atlantic, Tethys, and Iapetus Oceans, Cambridge University Press, 411 p.