Category Archives: Continental Wander Path

Differential Motions of the Continents, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras: The 120mya Inflection and Finale

Posted on March 3, 2018 by gymnosperm

A square kilometer of extruded ocean floor exerts force in all directions. The “squareness” is partly our own construct for convenience of measurement, but also justified by lateral offsets where the linear ruptures we call ridges accommodate the curvature of … Continue reading →

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Differential Motions of the Continents, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras V: The 80mya Inflection

Posted on February 10, 2018 by gymnosperm

In the last post on constraints we decided that the east Pacific and Juan de Fuca ridges were useless in constraining the motions of the Americas. We decided that the Atlantic, Greenland, and Lomonosov ridges were acceptable explanations for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics | 1 Comment

Differential Motions of Continents, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras

Posted on January 25, 2018 by gymnosperm

The total volume of ocean floor production becomes increasingly difficult to constrain as we work backwards in time. Ocean floor is increasingly lost to subduction, and efforts to replicate the missing parts become speculation. The continents, by contrast, have grown … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Paleogeography | 2 Comments

The Pacific Triangle, Take III

Posted on December 28, 2017 by gymnosperm

Essentially, the Pacific Triangle IS the Pacific Plate. Unless you wish to consider it a sinkhole, a point subduction zone, all that we know as the Pacific Plate has grown out of this spot in the last 175 million years. Seafloor … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Geological Evolution of the Western United States, Seafloor Isochrons | 1 Comment

The Cretaceous Superchron, Beaufort Isochrons, and the Motion of North America

Posted on December 19, 2017 by gymnosperm

In the last post we explored a very peculiar set of seafloor isochrons in the Beaufort Sea and Arctic ocean. We found that a perpendicular shift in seafloor spreading defined the Cretaceous Normal Superchron, the longest known period in earth … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Cretaceous normal superchron, Geography, Magnetic Reversals, Paleogeography | Leave a comment

Rocks, The Origional Hard Data

Posted on March 3, 2014 by gymnosperm

You simply can’t deny rock. Kick it and it throbs your toe. They lie around us, largely ignored, Farmers curse them and pile them in walls, yet a few dedicated folks with pointed hammers have picked them to yield an … Continue reading →