CompuServe Messages

>> I am lost as to what you are talking about here. The area between the most eastern part of Brazil & Africa does have crimping that could also be a crunching of S. America moving upward. The Central American area looks like it is the product of a back forth action, the curved fold of Panama with the matching curve of the lower antilles. These are compression folds or arcs from pivoting. >>N. America is moving back toward Africa?!?<< No I talking about N & S America. In the current theory they are just recently moved back together. >>There is no reason to expect all spreading ridges to build seafloor at the same rate; indeed every reference that I have which mentions the matter has them varying all the way from 0 to 16 cm/year in spread rate.<< This would be quite a bit of a different rate all along what appears to be a single mid ocean rise. How could the plate have a variable rate of expansion along the Mid Section and not display this in its basins. Are you saying the individual shift faults are where the stress of this variable rate is being released? >> The head start was more like 50-60 million years; the N. Atlantic opened between N.America (still part of Laurasia then) and W. Africa in the mid-Triassic and the S. Atlantic opened between S. America and Africa at the end of the Jurassic.<< It seams if this were the case the Mid Ocean ridge and associated shift faults would display these motions by the angles of the shift faults. The shift faults are not showing shifting in those directions. Where is the plate being subducted to allow this motion? Kamron