{"id":1790081,"date":"2021-02-04T19:02:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T00:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1790081"},"modified":"2021-02-04T19:02:51","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T00:02:51","slug":"one-billion-years-of-continental-drift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2021\/02\/one-billion-years-of-continental-drift\/","title":{"rendered":"One Billion Years of Continental Drift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/geoAlanC\/status\/1355095014339039233\">this animation<\/a> went viral last week:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Pretty amazing full plate tectonic animation of the last billion years from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AndrewMerdith?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@AndrewMerdith<\/a> &#8211; Merdith et al. 2021 (Earth Science Reviews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MullerDietmar?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@MullerDietmar<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EarthByteGroup?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@EarthByteGroup<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/UniAdelSciences?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@UniAdelSciences<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Plne1y1Qm7\">https:\/\/t.co\/Plne1y1Qm7<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/IIFGRaZ3vD\">pic.twitter.com\/IIFGRaZ3vD<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Alan Collins (@geoAlanC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/geoAlanC\/status\/1355095014339039233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 29, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It shows the movement of Earth\u2019s tectonic plates over the past billion years, and it was posted by one of the co-authors of <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.earscirev.2020.103477\">this study<\/a> proposing a new, single model of plate tectonic activity that covers the past billion years of Earth\u2019s existence. (Previous models, if I understand the abstract correctly, covered shorter periods\u2014for several-hundred-million-year values of short\u2014and didn\u2019t line up with each other.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So this animation went viral last week: Pretty amazing full plate tectonic animation of the last billion years from @AndrewMerdith &#8211; Merdith et al. 2021 (Earth Science Reviews) @MullerDietmar @EarthByteGroup @UniAdelSciences https:\/\/t.co\/Plne1y1Qm7 pic.twitter.com\/IIFGRaZ3vD &mdash; Alan&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2021\/02\/one-billion-years-of-continental-drift\/\">More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[772],"class_list":["post-1790081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-geology","tag-continental-drift","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2631,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/08\/continental-drift-gps-and-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":1790081,"position":0},"title":"Continental Drift, GPS and Europe","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"16 August 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"In response to the news that Australia has to correct its\u00a0GPS coordinates to account for\u00a0continental drift, the Ordnance Survey blog\u00a0examines whether Great Britain will have to do the same. \"The situation for us (and most of Europe) is not so bad. Europe\u2019s GPS compatible datum,\u00a0ETRS89, is fixed to the European\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;GPS&quot;","block_context":{"text":"GPS","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/gps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4627,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/08\/the-messed-up-mountains-of-middle-earth\/","url_meta":{"origin":1790081,"position":1},"title":"&#8216;The Messed Up Mountains of Middle-earth&#8217;","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"7 August 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Science fiction\/fantasy novelist Alex Acks, a geologist by training, has some issues with Middle-earth's mountain ranges. \"Middle-earth\u2019s got 99 problems, and mountains are basically 98 of them.\" Basically it comes down to how Tolkien's mountain ranges intersect at right angles\u2014and mountains don't\u00a0do that. And Mordor? Oh, I don\u2019t even want\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geology","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/geology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2735,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/08\/marie-tharp-continental-drift-as-girl-talk\/","url_meta":{"origin":1790081,"position":2},"title":"Marie Tharp: Continental Drift as &#8216;Girl Talk&#8217;","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"31 August 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"Another profile of ocean cartographer Marie Tharp, this time from Smithsonian.com's Erin Blakemore. As Blakemore recounts, Tharp\u00a0crunched\u00a0and mapped the sonar sounding data collected by her collaborator, Bruce Heezen; her calculations revealed a huge valley in the middle of a ridge in the North Atlantic seafloor. \u201cWhen I showed what I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geology","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/geology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"tharp-heezen","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/tharp-heezen-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":655,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/01\/seafloor-gravity-map\/","url_meta":{"origin":1790081,"position":3},"title":"Seafloor Gravity Map","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"31 January 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"The ocean floor\u00a0is\u00a0still very much\u00a0terra incognita: only 5 to 15 percent of it has been mapped via bathymetry. But using military satellite measurements of the Earth's shape and gravity field, a new map of the ocean floor has been created. \"The result of their efforts is a global data set\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Oceans&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Oceans","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/oceans\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"seafloor","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/seafloor-1024x737.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/seafloor-1024x737.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/seafloor-1024x737.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/seafloor-1024x737.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1817476,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2023\/07\/visualizing-continental-drift-typographically\/","url_meta":{"origin":1790081,"position":4},"title":"Visualizing Continental Drift, Typographically","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"24 July 2023","format":"link","excerpt":"Well, that\u2019s one way to visualize the rate of continental drift.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geology","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/geology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"xkcd comic showing continental drift; in the Atlantic Ocean is the following text: If you covered the surface of the Atlantic Ocean with twelve-point printed text, with the lines wrapping at the coasts, the expansion of the ocean basin due to plate tectonics would increase your word count by about 100 words per second.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/imgs.xkcd.com\/comics\/geohydrotypography.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2546,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/08\/australia-to-correct-tectonically-induced-gps-discrepancy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1790081,"position":5},"title":"Australia to Correct Tectonically Induced GPS Discrepancy","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"5 August 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"Decades of continental drift mean that GPS coordinates in Australia are off by approximately 1.5 metres (5 feet), which has implications for\u00a0self-driving cars and other applications that require very precise positioning. See coverage from\u00a0Atlas Obscura,\u00a0BBC News,\u00a0Popular Mechanics\u00a0and the\u00a0Washington Post. Basically, the discrepancy comes from the fact that GPS is based\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;GPS&quot;","block_context":{"text":"GPS","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/gps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1790081"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1790085,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790081\/revisions\/1790085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1790081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1790081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1790081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}