Jericho Tectonic Animation -- Critique Sought

[Peter Toth]

Hello Guild Members!

Taking advice from Charerg and following his very useful tutorial on advanced GPlates features, I've forged this "blank slate" of a world, which I will develop exquisitely over the next several weeks. As I'm still learning this rather complicated process, I invite anyone to critique my progress so far; only through your feedback do I stand a chance at improving my mapmaking skills.

First of all, the ANIMATION:

https://www.facebook.com/peter.toth....type=3&theater

Second, the GRAPHIC:



For those who've read this far, I'd like to point out several features on the map and animation:

1) The flowlines, which I learned from Charerg's tutorial, mark the spreading ridges.

2) The series of lines scrawled along the supercontinent are actually the locations of the ancient mountains. I suppose they were created when the supercontinent accreted and its topography folded.

3) The two hotspot locations are very hard to see; they begin near the end of the animation, and are located at -27 N/-32 W and 60 N/18 E.

Thank you for your interest, and please critique.

Cheers,

Peter

[Charerg]

Definitely another big step forward.

Now since you've asked for critique, here's some (apologies in advance since this might be a bit rough):

1) Overall, the size of the continents seems a bit uniform to my eyes. Also, they seem a bit too evenly spread across the globe, which is a touch unlikely (more of an observation than a criticism, I guess).

2) The overall breakup process seems fairly arbitrary. The supercontinent breaks apart, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of explanations as to why it might break up. This is not necessarily a flaw as such, since of course we don't know with absolute certainty what "caused" this or that supercontinent to break apart, but it's still worth considering.

2a) Another thing that catches the eye are the velocities of the continents breaking apart. Tectonic movements tend to be slow unless slab pull is involved. Both pieces of the supercontinent seem to fly apart at more-or-less similar (and very high) velocities. In reality the velocity of plate movement varies a lot, so more variability would be expected.

2b) And then both halves of the supercontinent break apart at the exact same moment into exactly three pieces. Again the continents seem to just break apart more-or-less arbitrarily with the pieces flying apart in every direction at high velocities.

2c) Slab pull forces seem to be largely absent, despite being the dominant (known) force behind the movements of Earth's tectonic plates, and the primary force behind the breakup of Gondwana. For example, take a look at this quick scribble (which is not very accurate from a scientific standpoint, but hopefully demonstrates the principle) I made about the early phase of Pangaea's breakup:



Sorry for being so, erm, critical but I hope you find the feedback useful. Remember that this is from the point of view of a tectonics nerd, so I tend to see a lot of flaws where 99.9% of Guilders probably wouldn't notice a thing. It all depends on how much time and energy you want to spend on tectonics. Though admittedly there is a certain satisfaction in creating something you know to be "scientifically accurate", so to speak, but it does take a lot of research, brainstorming, and revisions to get there.