DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10348271
title: A Quantitative Tomotectonic Plate Reconstruction of Western North America and the Eastern Pacific Basin

description: The two plate model archives in this directory are linked to the paper (Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, in press):

A Quantitative Tomotectonic Plate Reconstruction of Western North America and the Eastern Pacific Basin by Edward J. Clennett1, Karin Sigloch1, Mitchell G. Mihalynuk2, Maria Seton3, Martha A. Henderson2, Kasra Hosseini1,4, Afsaneh Mohammadzaheri1, Stephen T. Johnston5, and R. Dietmar Muller3

1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK

2. British Columbia Geological Survey, P.O. Box Stn Prov Govt, Victoria, BC, V8W 9N3, Canada

3. EarthByte Group, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

4. The Alan Turing Institute, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK

5. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada

The zipped archive contains two plate models: Clennett_etal_2020_M2019.zip and Clennett_etal_2020_S2013.zip. The former is our model in the Müller et al. (2019) reference frame, and the latter is our model implemented into the Shephard et al. (2013) plate reconstruction. Both of these folders contain the same types of files: coastlines, plate boundaries, plate topologies, a rotation file and terrane shapefiles.

To view the models, open GPlates (downloadable at: www.gplates.org), click 'File' > 'Open Project', navigate to the folder containing the desired model, and then click on the file Clennett_etal_2020_G3_XXXX.gproj. This will simultaneously open all the files that comprise the model. A layers panel will appear, with the option to turn on/off certain files. The view can be changed by clicking on the globe, and the model can be run by clicking the play button in the animation bar, starting from 170Ma. Features can be inspected by clicking the 'choose feature' tab, selecting a feature, and clicking 'query feature'.

The files that comprise the model are described below:

1. Clennett_etal_2020_Coastlines.gpml: Coastlines used in the reconstruction. The coastlines of western North America and Mexico were edited from the global model to account for later terrane accretions. 

2. Clennett_etal_2020_NAm_bounds.gpml: File containing the new plate boundaries digitised in this study.

3. Clennett_etal_2020_Plates.gpml: File containing the edited plate boundaries of the global model, as well as our new continuously-closing plate topologies.

4. Clennett_etal_2020_Rotations.rot: This is the rotation file that contains the relative motions between plates, terranes and plate boundaries for western North America and the eastern Pacific basin. The first column specifies the plate ID, the second column the timestep, the third, fourth and fifth columns are the latitude, longitude and angle of the stage rotations, and the sixth column is the plate that the feature moves relative to. Most lines are accompanied with a comment describing the rotation.

5. Clennett_etal_2020_Terranes.gpml: This file contains all the terranes shown in the model. We further divided these into superterranes, so that each can be coloured accordingly for better visualisation purposes: a. Angayucham.gpml b. Farallon.gpml c. Guerrero.gpml d. Insular.gpml e. Intermontane.gpml f. Kula.gpml g. North_America.gpml h. Western_Jurassic.gpml

6. Movie S1. Movie showing plate evolution at 1 million-year intervals, embedded within the Muller et al. (2019) global model. Blue boundaries are subduction zones, red boundaries are mid-ocean ridges, green boundaries are transform faults, and pink boundaries are other unspecified boundaries. Plates are not labelled but can be identified from figures 5-10.

7. Movie S2. Movie showing plate evolution at 1 million-year intervals, embedded within the Shephard et al. (2013) global model. Blue boundaries are subduction zones, red boundaries are mid-ocean ridges, green boundaries are transform faults, and pink boundaries are other unspecified boundaries. Plates are not labelled but can be identified from figures 5-10.

 

The agegrids and spreading rate grids associated with this model can be accessed at: https://repo.gplates.org/webdav/PlateModel_Age_SR_Grids/Clennett_etal_2020_G3/