Quote Originally Posted by macbeth View Post
Great tutorial. I'm using it in a slightly different fashion as well. Instead of starting at the plates, I started at my super-continent, drew a few random lines for where the future boundaries would be, then drew the continents as they drifted apart. This lets me control the number of continents and the basic shape and gives me the location of my divergent boundaries and my plate movement directions. Then I'll use the knowledge here to find out where my convergent boundaries are and where my mountain ranges and island chains form.

The only thing I didn't see you address is how mountain ranges, when they meet the ocean, don't just stop. They continue on into the ocean and decrease in elevation and flatten out, and the peeks become first a peninsula, then islands in an island chain until the range eventually flattens out and decreases in elevation enough to fall completely below sea level. This is somewhat apparent in southwestern Argentina and northwestern Mexico.
I'd like to see an example of this. Though I don't find myself minding inaccurate maps in novels, I find that when I consider to creating one I become obsessed with ensuring that the details are as accurate as humanly possible. I've tried to find videos on the change in shape and position of Earth's tectonic plates themselves, but they only ever show the movement of the continents. I'm not sure how to deal with the change in shape of the actual plates.

In the time of Pangaea, I imagine that there were more plates containing just large expanses of ocean opposite Pangaea. How did these disappear/shrink/change shape over time? Did they just get mostly or entirely subducted beneath other plates? The more I think about it, the more questions I have and the harder time I have beginning.

So I guess what it all boils down to is this: To anyone who has used the Pangaea/plate movement over time method, how did you determine how the plates would change shape and size as well as position? I hope this question is clear, although I am not sure that it is.