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GEOLOGY, September 2015; v. 43; no. 9; p. 783–786 | Data Repository item 2015268 | doi:10.1130/G36819.1 | Published online 17 July 2015
GEOLOGY
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2015 Geological 43 | ofNumber
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Figure 1. Pangea reconstruction. Thick black and magenta lines show northern boundaries of India and Arabia and southern boundary of
Eurasian craton. Dashed light-green line marks outer margin of Pangeides active margin. Dashed yellow line shows approximate boundary
between active margin and arc of thick lithosphere. Dashed dark-green line outlines area underlain by thinner lithosphere that now under-
lies North Africa, Arabia, and western Europe. Inset shows same reconstruction without any lithospheric thickness contours. NA—North
America;, Eu—Eurasia; SA—South America; Af—Africa; An—Antarctica; Au—Australia. Oblique Mercator projection with axis 30°N, 80°E.
boundary between thin oceanic and thick cra- volved. The resistance to continental shortening tic Basin, which forms the only interruption in
tonic lithosphere. must also depend on lithospheric thickness, be- the entire length of thick lithosphere in Figure
The contiguity of thick lithosphere in Figure cause otherwise shortening would stop before the 1. This misfit may result from relative motion
1 could have resulted only if thick lithosphere thick lithosphere became contiguous. between the regions east and west of the Ural
was produced or deformed (or both) during the Figure 2A shows the details of equatorial Pan- Mountains since the Permian.
assembly of Pangea. Before Pangea was assem- gea (or western Gondwanaland). The Atlantic fits
bled, its separate pieces must in general have had show that the thick lithosphere of North America Thickened Lithosphere and Pan-African
different shapes that would not fit together. At and South America and of Africa formed a con- Orogenesis
present, regions of thick lithosphere are widely tinuous belt before the Atlantic opened, and that Within the arc of contiguous thick litho-
scattered and have irregular boundaries. As the the thin lithosphere beneath northeast Brazil sphere, several belts of thinner lithosphere oc-
fits in Figure 1 show, they can have undergone is part of a more extensive region of thin litho- cur. These are particularly clear in Gondwana-
little deformation during their dispersion after the sphere in East Pangea. Figure 2B shows the ma- land, both along the continental margins and
Permian. If they had undergone deformation dur- jor structural domains on the southern continents within the present-day continents of Africa and
ing the dispersion, they would no longer fit to- using the same scale and projection as in Figure South America. Where these occur along the
gether when Pangea was reconstructed by rigid 2A, and largely agrees with the reconstructions margins, it is difficult to know if these features
rotations. If future motions again result in the for- of Vaughan and Pankhurst (2008) and of Tohver result from later stretching during continental
mation of a new Pangea, they will, in general, not et al. (2006). Their Arabian-Nubian and Nile breakup or are caused by smearing owing to
bring the rifted margins back together in exactly Shields are shown as Pan-African in Figure 2B. the limited spatial resolution of the surface
the same configuration as they had in the Perm- Much of the region shown as Pan-African prob- wave tomography. However, within the conti-
ian. Therefore, regions of thick lithosphere can ably also contains large amounts of reworked nents, they show a strong correlation with the
only form contiguous regions if thick lithosphere older rocks. mapped presence of Pan-African–aged (650–
is formed in the gaps, or if the regions themselves The region of Laurasia in Figure 2C shows 550 Ma) orogenic belts (Kennedy, 1964; Miller
are deformed. Probably both processes are in- that the reconstruction does not close the Arc- et al., 1996; Bizzi et al., 2003; Harley, 2003;