Breaking supercontinents; no need to choose between  passive or active

Wolstencroft, Martin; Davies, J. Huw

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-8-817-2017

Articles | Volume 8, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-8-817-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-8-817-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 4

Research article

|

07 Aug 2017

Research article |

| 07 Aug 2017

Breaking supercontinents; no need to choose between passive or active

Martin Wolstencroft and J. Huw Davies

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Final revised paper (published on 07 Aug 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 08 Feb 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer's comment on manuscript se-2017-14 by Wolstencroft & Davies', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 Mar 2017
SC1: 'Interactive comment on "Breaking supercontinents; no need to choose between passive or active" by Martin Wolstencroft and Huw Davies', Luca Dal Zilio, 15 Mar 2017
RC2: 'Review of Breaking supercontinents; no need to choose between passive or active', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Apr 2017
AC1: 'Author Response to Reviewers and Comments', Martin Wolstencroft, 29 May 2017

Short summary

A key aspect of plate tectonics is the periodic assembly and subsequent break-up of supercontinents. There is strong evidence that this has happened repeatedly over geological history, but exactly how a supercontinent breaks up is still debated. In this paper, we use computer modelling of Earth's interior to show that the force needed to break a supercontinent should always arise from a combination of global-scale passive pulling apart and active pushing apart forces driven by the mantle.