AERLAAN – A playground built for a muse

[Pixie]

Wow, that's good g.plates work in there! Congrats.
SOLID WORK!

However, I actually think you went very far in the past which will complicate working out topography. And you saved this as a 520-frames GIF, which is a lot to work with.

Here's what I would do: save a couple of frames (but not as gif, since GIF-frames only contain changes from the previous frame), mainly from the last "eons". In each of those frames scribble where mountains are being created and where bits of ocean are getting trapped. You can use this detailed GIF you made to find that out.
From one frame to the other, carry this bit of information. But keeping in mind that mountains will erode and ocean floors fill with sediment, so that oldest notes "age"...

(did this advice make any sense?)

[PaGaN]

Hey Pixie!

yep, your advice made perfect sense and was actually along the lines of what i'm working on right now. I may have gone a bit bananas but i screengreabbed the gplates reconstructions at 10ma intervals and on each interval are marking out the oceanic ridges/divergent boundaries, covergent boundaries and transform areas. Also, VERY roughly marking up where the ranges are (with a full understanding that these ranges will most likely have eroded significantly by the time "present day" rolls around.

Question for you though Pixie. Regarding ocean crust to ocean crust subduction, i know this is crucial for figuring our where ones island arcs are going to be, but i'm having trouble figuring out how oceanic crust ends up being subducted by oceanic crust. With the wilson cycle we only seem to be focusing on the push/pull dynamics between continental and oceanic crust. The only thing i can think of is that oceanic crust subducts oceanic crusts when a new rift system spreads to the point that it intersects a older rift system = subduction time.

This is why I felt that i needed to go back as far as i did so that i can get a grip on the midocean ridges and be able to figure out which oceanic crust is oldest and will therefore subduct under newer crust. I also chose to re-centre the map on the northern sea as this seems to provide a lot more visual focus to the map.

Aerlaan 77ma.PNG

EDIT: Explanation for 77ma caption at the top of the image = my gplates reconstruction ran from 200ma to 0ma but I stopped at 77ma as i really liked that configuration for the landmasses. the reconstruction at 0ma went a bit sideways with most of the landmasses kind of forming a girdle around the world with very little land reaching into the northern or southern hemispheres.

I've stalled a bit as my mother-in-law is staying with us until wednesday and sleeping in our study (where my mac pro lives).

This time next week i should be in a position to take this all back into Photoshop to work out the coastlines and get onto the topography which, given all the tectonic legwork, should be relatively straightforward (fingers crossed)

PaGaN

[Pixie]

Looking forward to see your results, PaGaN. But no worries, this is a hobby - you just take good care of your mother-in-law first

Question for you though Pixie. Regarding ocean crust to ocean crust subduction, i know this is crucial for figuring our where ones island arcs are going to be, but i'm having trouble figuring out how oceanic crust ends up being subducted by oceanic crust.

Regarding this. Ocean-Ocean subduction exists in some places on Earth, most notably on the caribbean plate, the aleutian islands and the philipines plate. In all three cases one the plate staying on top is the remnant of a now inactive spreading-center (starter oceanic ridge), still, geologists are still struggling to spell out the details of their past lives.
Here's an article I found about the caribbean plate - it's technical, but have a look at the pics

In general, for the caribbean, imagine this:
1 - North America starts to split from S.America, forming an initial spreading center (a bit of oceanic crust eventually).
2 - These two continents were also splitting from Africa (and Europe, which split before), giving room to the Atlantic Ocean.
3 - Eventually, when they all end apart, crust from the Atlantic and crust from the Caribbean meet and one might end up under the other... (which happened!)

[PaGaN]

Thanks Pixie, that's some great information in there and confirms that my suspicions were certainly in the ballpark or even spot on.

Just enjoying a quite night right now with the husband and huskies after saying goodbye my mother in law knowing that she had a great visit

Back to Aerlaan tomorrow night.

Kacey, if you read this post you will find Pixie's post re: oceanic/oceanic plate subduction very helpful and informative.

[PaGaN]

So, not much mapping for me this weekend. I have been conscripted into helping husband with accomplishing two challenges for a work competition (knitting an item of clothing and designing a team logo). LMAO.

Hi hum...(just go with it PaGaN, just go with it)