Deforming Zealandia reconstruction

Q&A
1

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me with some actual (rather specific) reconstruction work. My research involves reconstructions of Gondwana in the Early Palaeozoic, but so far I haven’t been happy with the shape and positioning of Zealandia. Currently in my model it is effectively a series of broken-up solid polygons which sit awkwardly with the rest of the reconstruction, but I was wondering if anyone has had a go at producing a deforming mesh version of Zealandia showing the significant crustal stretching it experienced in the Cretaceous. The below figure from Mortimer et al. (2018) (Redirecting) illustrates my point.

NZ_reconstruction_mortimer2018
NZ_reconstruction_mortimer2018702×708 107 KB

Thanks in advance,

Tom

2

Hi Tom,

Have you seen this paper (Muller et al. 2019)? It has the retro-deformed outline of Zealandia in it.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018TC005462

Cheers,
Sabin

3

Hi Sabin,

I don’t know how that paper slipped beneath my radar! A little adaption of the model in the supplementary data should suit my purposes well (with proper citation, of course).

Thank you for that.

Tom

4

Hooray!!! :slight_smile: