625 Million Years of Tectonic History on an Unnamed Conworld

[Peter Toth]

Hello Guild,

This project has been consuming my time over the last month, and although it lacks hotspots, boundaries, and probably other important features, I feel ready to share it now. I'm hoping for a critique from some of you tectonics experts, such as Charerg, so that I may improve the map in future posts.

I've used Artifexian's tutorial video as a guide, as well as GPlates and Photos Legacy to create the animation included.

The planet is Earthlike although with much different orbital elements and atmospheric details; I'll post those as soon as I've worked out the details of this planet's inner composition. I'm planning on being an absolute stickler with scientific details, by the way.

I hope you enjoy this animation, which can be accessed by clicking the white square below the tectonic map image.

Peter

[Tiana]

I'm not seeing the white square, just the still image.

[Peter Toth]

Hi Tiana,

Here's the link again, from my Facebook. Hope it works.

https://www.facebook.com/10001366170...0614446503483/

[Tiana]

Yeah, it worked! Also WHOA, nice! That's a great map animation.

[chateauferret]

Nice. Only thing I would say is it needs some nice island arcs at the subduction zones where thry extend beyond continental margins into oceanic - oceanic collisions and form things like the Sunda Arc.

[Stìophan]

This is looking very good Peter, love the animation! Very much looking forward to see your project develop.

[Peter Toth]

Hello chateauferret and Stiophan,

I believe I made the island arcs much too small to be seen, although you can kind of see them on the outer boundaries as the supercontinent rifts apart. I used Artifexian's equation for determining the rough land area of the island arcs: age in MYr x length in km / 2. As they evolve, you can see the land area getting larger and larger. The final 50 million years of evolution sees the large island arc in the middle get subducted and added to the continent that approaches from the right, towards the middle of the map.

Glad you like the animation, Stiophan.

Thank you so much for your interest. By the way, here's some preliminary work on my first continent. It's very rough and the layout will likely change depending on your feedback.



Anyways, hope you like it.

Peter

[Stìophan]

Wow, I wish I really could get my continents to look as detailed as that! I love also the sea floor as well, very realistic in my view. Keep up the good work Peter!

[worldbuilding pasta]

My one point of criticism is that collisions should generally be more complete; i.e. rather than stopping on first contact they should really push into each other with more overlap of their pre-collision edges, but maybe that's the sort of thing you want to leave as abstracted in gplates and deal with in your final topography drawings.

[Eowyn Cwper]

Looking good, makes me want to get into tectonics too.