Hmm, so what would happen to say plate O, that presumably was subducting under V+A before they started rifting apart? Should O be separating along the same spreading ridge? As it stands I seem to have it being pulled under that ridge which doesn't seem right.Originally Posted by Charerg
B also is going under M and A but has that oceanic convergence border with M as a result. Would it make more sense for B to be being pulled apart by the continental portions of A and M but then not being pulled under the eastern/oceanic section of M?
That does help! I initially planned out some continental movements but it was rather eyeballed and rudimentary and focused only on the landmasses, leading to a lot of the initial directions I used (that didn't have much tectonic sense behind them). What you're describing is a lot more... coherent than any of my original ideas. As you can see from that start of this thread I originally decided what borders were divergent and convergent based on what directions I had the plates moving, rather than the other way around. I assume you mean that M was consuming crust on its eastern boundary (in the western hemisphere)?So let me describe what I see, based on the map and your words.
Plates C and M were the bulk of a very large continent. They rifted a long time ago opening up an ocean between them. Plate M, on its western boundary, has been consuming a lot of crust by subduction/collision, and that explains the movements of B, F and N. It also explains the proximity of O, which escaped collision because of a more recent rift separating it from F. As to why C and M broke away, that's because the huge bloc that is plate C got pulled by a subduction boundary on its SW side, where the mess that is V+E+A was subducting everything around.
Fast forward a bit, the ocean between C and M initiates subduction... That starts as an infection by the subduction under group V+A. These infections spread quickly (not kidding, that's the actual scientific wording), this time along the old oceanic crust near C's continental margin, and M ends up suffering the pull that is now pulling it back to C.
This would explain your map in rough, but there are so many angles/directions that should really be refined to support it. Polar projections would help too. And I didn't even consider untangling E+V.
M2 is fine with those boundaries. It was part of M, but it got loose (rifted) because it's not suffering the same subduction pull that its parent plate.
Hope this helps, sorry if it doesn't
In my original plans the major landmasses of plates S, C, and M were all originally part of the same supercontinent, with S and C breaking apart more recently than C and M (although I'm not sure now how plate C2 would have come about in the mix of that...).
Throwing the map back on a sphere again I did find my directions on the polar plates were a bit off from what I intended (not to say that what I intended necessarily made sense!):
The white arrows are the general direction that I'd intend - although I'm not sure if S should really be moving all that much, since it's almost certainly not being subducted by M2 (and M2 should probably be moving a bit more towards S). I mentioned above that the place O's oceanic crust is being subducted doesn't make a lot of sense at the moment, but I do like the idea of the V+A zone pulling O under. Maybe it should just be A still pulling O while both rift from V (so O would be moving in a bit more of an A-ward direction).
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