How to reconstruct my own points using Gplates?

Q&A
1

Hey,
I have a file of longitude and latitude of present-day locations. I would like to move these points back in time with their plates. Essentially, I would like to do something identical to this, but it’s done in Gplately. I could have done it in python but I think the interactive visualization is better in Gplates.
I am wondering is there a similar tutorial but for Gplates?

Specific questions:

  1. How do I convert my .txt to .GPML and import to Gplates?
  2. What should I do with the imported data for them to reconstruct?

Thanks,
Axel

2

Probably the easiest way is to follow Christian Heine’s advice (referenced from here). That is:

  1. Store your points in a text file as two columns (longitude and latitude) and then give it a ‘.gmt’ extension.
  2. Load it into GPlates.
  3. Assign plate IDs to your points after loading a reconstruction model.

…as covered in the above link. Then your points will reconstruct in GPlates.

An alternative to part (1) above is to use a script convert_xy_to_gplates.py (see here for details).
But note that PlateTectonicTools is now a part of GPlately (which means using, eg, import gplately; gplately.ptt.<attribute> instead of import ptt; ptt.<attribute>). Or when using GPlately command-line tools, get help with python -m gplately --help and more specifically python -m gplately convert_xy_to_gplates --help.

3

Hey John. Thank you so much for the answer. However, it doesn’t appear to work. I am running GPLATES 2.5.0 on macOS 10.15.7. I made a text file containing only longitude, latitude, and changed its extension to .gmt. However, when I try to import this into GPLATES through File-> Open Feature Collection, the .gmt file is greyed out. Dragging it into the GPLATES window also doesn’t work.
Here is my text file and GPLATES project: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16yiScATacDzJYsF6p-OdxZ1tu0gm0L7L?usp=drive_link.
Thank you so much for your help!

4

Ah nvm! Uploading to Google drive made me realize the issue immediately. On a mac, only changing the extension to .gmt is not changing the file type, that’s why GPLATES was not recognizing the .gmt! I now fixed it with “Get Info” pane of the text file. Now it works! Thank you!