Dancing Continents

摘要

Some of the world's ocean basins, like the Atlantic, are currently opening, while others, like the Pacific, are closing. Plate tectonic data recording the rotation of rigid objects across Earth's surface mean that we can analyze the plate motions associated with these openings and closings. Forty years ago, Tuzo Wilson pointed out that because similar analyses are impossible for times before the age of the oldest ocean floor, the best we can do is to interpret the older geological record in terms of cycles (now called Wilson cycles) of the opening and the closing of ocean basins (1). The way of describing how and when continents were broken up and younger continents or super-continents were later assembled has been to map and date sutures within continents that mark the places where ancient ocean basins have opened and closed.