Real-Earth Plates with New Tectonic Directions?

[cliftonprince]

So, newbie question, sorry if this has been covered, I did try to search the forum, but I couldn't really narrow my results enough. So please feel free to berate me and give me a link ...

Basically, I'm looking for tectonic-plate movement software, I think. I think? I want to generate plate tectonic movements of our REAL Earth, with the plates going in FICTIONAL directions. I'm trying to create a fantasy world, complete with globe and maps, which is essentially (a) our real-Earth but with (b) the tectonic plates having moved over time in different directions.

As for software, I'd like to be able to (1) select and upload a (non-fictional) map of Gondwanaland or of Pangaea, as best our scientists presently surmise them to have been (2) at a specific certain point in time in that mega-continent's actual history; then (3) take that mega-continent's various constituent continental plates (which would have moved in various historical directions) and simply re-direct those plates in new directions with new rates of movement, perhaps tweaking as I see fit; and thus (4) let time pass in the simulator software and see what it might come up with for a new version of modern present-day Earth. (Well, actually, I'd like Earth at about 400,000 years before the present ...).

For example, maybe I'll take the Africa-and-South-America plate in Gondwanaland and, instead of having the two (present-day) continents split apart, rather, I'd have them drive together and therefore build up a Himalaya-like mountain range where the South Atlantic Ocean presently lies. Get it? I'd like to be able to select various starting-points, various new directions and rates of movement, tweak and play with the software, run multiple simulations, variously speed up, slow down, or re-direct the various plates. Ideally I'd like to have input into the plate movement at several points in time during the new development of this globe; but I could see how just one moment of intervention at the start might fill the bill.

Is this a simple or a radically complicated thing to do? Is there software? Some way to tweak existing software?

I'm not computer-illiterate, so I think I could probably manage a simple Java application or something from Sourceforge (for instance) but I'd rather have a stand-alone with a decent end-UI. That's because I'm not as much interested in the specific final technically accurate results (nor do I wish to develop the software) as I am in experimenting to see what might occur. I'm not in this hunt for the computer result. I want the map. Therefore, if some results are weak, for example if something like the overall watershed erosion rate turns out to be a little questionable, well that's just fine, I only needed to see the big picture about that Himalaya range in the Atlantic. And get the big global map result of the Atlantic Mountains, taller than Everest!

It's all for the purposes of alternative history projects in fantasy / sci-fi which I am planning. Just like some people write alternative history about what if Napoleon won or Hitler survived, I'm writing about what if the continents drifted differently. I'm likely to populate the various (new) land-masses with reasonable approximations of what we know to have actually developed, too (Australia keeps its marsupials), but that's a different issue.

Thanks for any help. Sorry if this is the wrong forum, or if the answers should have been self-evident to me. I did see the beginner's software guides and other FAQs, wonder if y'all can help augment those threads?

[Azélor]

The only software I know is G plates. I'm not sure it does exactly what you are looking for.

[cliftonprince]

Yeah, it kind-of does, but kind-of doesn't. I'm going to have to become more than a mere experimentor with it, though, before I know what its limitations might be.