Plate jumps to original position when I change its parent plate ID in the rotation file

Worldbuilding
1

Hello. I am following Artefexian and WorldbuildingPasta’s tutorials on gplates, and I’m trying to get my continents to collide. I’m stuck on the part where you link one continent to the parent continent so they can start moving together. I set the anchor plate ID to the parent (300), and then viewed the reconstruction poles. I took the coordinates from the plate being linked (500) and added a new line to my rotation file with the coordinates from the equivalent rotations menu, with the same timestamp as the point of collision (1940), and the new anchor ID (300).
But when I reload the rotation file, the continent I’m trying to make follow my parent continent jumps back to it’s starting position. This happens even when I reset my anchor plate ID to 000.

Captures
Captures1598×984 294 KB

(Pink is plate ID 300, green is plate ID 500. )
(I haven’t bothered altering the drift correction since I’ve redone this process a dozen times already and it doesn’t seem to make any difference whether I do it or not)

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong or how to fix this. I’ve tried using the coordinates from 0.01 frames in the future and past, I’ve tried using other plates and reversing the parent and child plates. Any help would be appreciated

2

Hi leviathan,

I’m not a worldbuilder so I don’t know the specifics, but it looks like you need to change:

500 1.0    ...        000
500 1940.0 <new pole> 300
500 1940.0 ...        000
500 1950.0 ...        000

…to:

500 1.0    ...        000
500 1940.0 ...        000
500 1940.0 <new pole> 300
500 1950.0 <new pole> 300

…since there needs to be a new sequence covering times older than 1940 (relative to plate 300). You’ve just got it at a single time (1940).

There’s more information on crossovers in Tutorial 2.2: Changing Rotations, Equivalent Finite Rotations, and Cross-Overs.

3

I’ve come back to this problem a few days later, and I found the solution, in case anyone else is having a similar problem. When I first did this, I forgot to change the anchor plate ID in my drift correction line to the new plate ID (300), and had kept it as 000. After changing that, it started working as intended.