An open-source software environment for visualizing and refining plate tectonic reconstructions using high-resolution geological and geophysical data sets

Williams, S.; Müller, R. D.; Landgrebe, Tcw; Whittaker, Joanne M.

doi:10.1130/gsatg139a.1

Cited by 78 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Nowadays, several softwares enable to easily reconstruct the global geography in three-dimensions using rotation angles and poles (e.g. GPlates, Williams et al 2012, GMap, Torsvik & Smethurst 1999.…”

Section: Paleomagnetic Reconstruction Of Paleocontinentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleomagnetism of the Amazonian Craton and its role in paleocontinents

et al. 2016

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In the last decade, the participation of the Amazonian Craton on Precambrian supercontinents has been clarified thanks to a wealth of new paleomagnetic data. Paleo to Mesoproterozoic paleomagnetic data favored that the Amazonian Craton joined the Columbia supercontinent at 1780 Ma ago, in a scenario that resembled the South AMerica and BAltica (SAMBA) configuration. Then, the mismatch of paleomagnetic poles within the Craton implied that either dextral transcurrent movements occurred between Guiana and Brazil-Central Shield after 1400 Ma or internal rotation movements of the Amazonia-West African block took place between 1780 and 1400 Ma. The presently available late-Mesoproterozoic paleomagnetic data are compatible with two different scenarios for the Amazonian Craton in the Rodinia supercontinent. The first one involves an oblique collision of the Amazonian Craton with Laurentia at 1200 Ma ago, starting at the present-day Texas location, followed by transcurrent movements, until the final collision of the Amazonian Craton with Baltica at ca. 1000 Ma. The second one requires drifting of the Amazonian Craton and Baltica away from the other components of Columbia after 1260 Ma, followed by clockwise rotation and collision of these blocks with Laurentia along Grenvillian Belt at 1000 Ma. Finally, although the time Amazonian Craton collided with the Central African block is yet very disputed, the few late Neoproterozoic/Cambrian paleomagnetic poles available for the Amazonian Craton, Laurentia and other West Gondwana blocks suggest that the Clymene Ocean separating these blocks has only closed at late Ediacaran to Cambrian times, after the Amazonian Craton rifted apart from Laurentia at ca. 570 Ma.

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Section: Paleomagnetic Reconstruction Of Paleocontinentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleomagnetism of the Amazonian Craton and its role in paleocontinents

et al. 2016

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“…However, the Deccan continental fl ood basalts were not antipodal to the 66 Ma Chicxulub crater at the time of the impact, but instead separated by an epicentral distance of ~130° (Williams et al, 2012;Chatterjee et al, 2013). Also, a Chicxulub-size impact does not in any case appear capable of Renne et al, 2013) and span of Chron 29R (66.398-65.688 Ma in GTS 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Triggering of the largest Deccan eruptions by the Chicxulub impact

Richards

Álvarez

Self

et al. 2015

Geological Society of America Bulletin

171

151

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“…With this implementation GPlates can reconstruct raster data on a wide variety of desktop and laptop computers manufactured over the last decade, enabling users to interactively visualize and analyse arbitrarily high-resolution geophysical raster data for geological times in the past. This capability forms the basis for interactively building and improving plate reconstructions in an iterative fashion, for tectonically complex regions as well as for ancient supercontinent assemblies, which can easily be analysed using GPlates by assigning geophysical grids and geological data to individual tectonic elements and interactively testing their alignment in alternative reconstructions (Williams et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each rotation, consisting of an axis passing through the globe centre and an angle, rigidly rotates a tectonic plate across the spherical surface of the globe. The need for interactive raster reconstruction includes the ability to quickly reconstruct high-resolution geophysical raster data within alternative plate tectonic rotation models in order to build, alter and optimize, or simply visualize and interrogate those models (Williams et al, 2012). Part of this involves visualizing how well ancient geological features align at reconstruction times when they were in close proximity to each other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plate tectonic raster reconstruction in GPlates

2014

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Abstract. We describe a novel method implemented in the GPlates plate tectonic reconstruction software to interactively reconstruct arbitrarily high-resolution raster data to past geological times using a rotation model. The approach is based on the projection of geo-referenced raster data into a cube map followed by a reverse projection onto rotated tectonic plates on the surface of the globe. This decouples the rendering of a geo-referenced raster from its reconstruction, providing a number of benefits including a simple implementation and the ability to combine rasters with different georeferencing or inbuilt raster projections. The cube map projection is accelerated by graphics hardware in a wide variety of computer systems manufactured over the last decade. Furthermore, by integrating a multi-resolution tile partitioning into the cube map we can provide on-demand tile streaming, level-of-detail rendering and hierarchical visibility culling, enabling researchers to visually explore essentially unlimited resolution geophysical raster data attached to tectonic plates and reconstructed through geological time. This capability forms the basis for interactively building and improving plate reconstructions in an iterative fashion, particularly for tectonically complex regions.

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An open-source software environment for visualizing and refining plate tectonic reconstructions using high-resolution geological and geophysical data sets

Cited by 78 publications

References 29 publications

Paleomagnetism of the Amazonian Craton and its role in paleocontinents

Paleomagnetism of the Amazonian Craton and its role in paleocontinents

Triggering of the largest Deccan eruptions by the Chicxulub impact

Plate tectonic raster reconstruction in GPlates

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