Hot Spots & Hot Spot Tracks - Vignette 03

This animation illustrates the breakup of Africa and South America, featuring the eruption of volcanic islands along hot spot tracks in the South Atlantic. Geographic area of interest: South Atlantic Ocean. Geological Time Interval: 200 Ma (early Jurassic) to Modern.
keywords: Pangea, plate tectonics, continental breakup, eustasy, rifting, Central Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Africa, South America, Madagascar, India, Antarctica, sea floor spreading, hot spots, hot spot tracks, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, mid-ocean ridge, Scotese, animation
Please cite as:
Scotese, C.R., & van der Pluijm, B., 2020. Deconstructing Tectonics: Ten Animated Explorations, "Hot Spots and Hot Spot Tracks", Earth and Space Science,
7, e2019EA000989. doi. org/10.1029/2019EA000989
More Info:
Anomalously hot mantle can create continental and oceanic regions at the surface that are characterized by extensive volcanic activity. These volcanic regions are thought to be due to hot, buoyant, rising plumes of mantle, called mantle plumes, and the associated volcanic activity is called hotspot volcanism (Morgan, 1971). Hotspots are characterized by the deposition of a large volume of volcanic rocks with geochemical signatures that are distinct from subduction-related and ocean ridge
or rift-related volcanism (Sleep, 1992). Especially voluminous hotspots produce oceanic island chains and plateaus.
One modern example of hotspot volcanism is the Hawaiian volcanic island chain in the Pacific Ocean. The mantle is more stationary than the overlying lithospheric plate (moving faster by at least one order of magnitude), so the location of active volcanism changes as the plate moves over the mantle plume with time. This creates a trail of volcanic islands that become older as they move away from the active hotspot (Wilson, 1963). Today, Hawaii’s Big Island is the active part of one such hot spot track, while a series of extinct volcanic islands and submarine volcanoes extend off to the northwest and north, forming the Hawaiian-Emperor island chain.
Some mantle plumes are long-lived, lasting 100 million years or more, while others are short-lived, lasting less than 10 million years. The orientation of a hotspot track provides the direction of plate motion relative to a mantle reference frame, so absolute motion, and the age of volcanic rocks along the track records the velocity of overlying plates.

The opening of the Atlantic Ocean along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge was accompanied by several mantle plumes under the late Paleozoic supercontinent Pangea, including Iceland in the North Atlantic and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. The South Atlantic preserves a trail of progressively older hotspot volcanism from the southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, marked today by Tristan da Cunha, to northern Namibia in Africa and southern Brazil in South America.
Closing the Atlantic Ocean shows these two continental areas coming together at ~140 Ma and marks the location of a mantle plume under Pangea at the start of ocean spreading. The Tristan da Cunha hotspot track is especially pronounced in the eastern South Atlantic and is mirrored by a track to the west of the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Notice also that the mirror-image tracks are not parallel to the ridge’s spreading direction, showing that the ridge and plates were together moving in a northerly direction relative to the hotspot (absolute) framework.

[@melodiefrances3898]

I will never forget in grade school (the 60s) being told about how Africa and South America sure looked like they fit together, but that it had to just be a coincidence ... lol. Everytime I see something like this I reflect back on that memory ... Thank you SOOOOOO much for these animations. I can stare at them for hours, they are just so incredibly fascinating in so many ways. Watching an ocean being born. Dayumm!!!

[@edwardlulofs444]

Wow. That's not how I imagined the origin of Madagascar! It was stuck on the side of India, then split off of Africa, then scraped into Africa. Then away from Africa until India sheared off of Madagascar and India went flying north. Now I can watch the mid-ocean volcanics.

[@TheErik249]

WOW! Plate techtonic's in extreme detail... including sea level changes, desertifications, mountain building, rifting, etc, etc. The details of each regions different changes are astounding. It took me an hour to get through this video. I started, then stopped. Studied the changes. Started, then stopped. Studied the changes. At 87 MYA... Most of South America is underwater. For 30 million years... The northwest portion of Africa is a giant island. This would mean that all of the dinosaurs that had evolved in that region of the world were isolated from the rest of the dinosaurs, and it would mean that they evolved traits during that time period that no other dinosaur evolved. I'm sure that paleontology has extensive data explaining this. At 75 MYA... The Indian subcontinent shoots north like a rocket. I'm wondering where the Reunion mantle plume was in correlation to that subcontinent around 70 MYA. This is when the Deccan traps event occurred. It has been estimated to have ended at 60 MYA. Thank you for another great video the Mr. Scotese.

[@TheErik249]

@@busimagen Okay, thats your theory. Do you offer any evidence?

[@catherinehubbard1167]

Mesmerizing and awesome to watch, but Laurasian continents are not always fully visible and I saw no marked hotspot trails.

[@mpetersen6]

I imagine that sea levels and flooding of continental centers is related not only to no major glaciation but uplift or subsidence as well.

[@reinodaserrocia6706]

It would be interesting a video showing the formation of the Serra da Mantiqueira and the Serra do Mar in southeastern Brazil, on the map you could see a little but it was not so clear, it seems that Mantiqueira 140 million years ago had an altitude not very different from today and was just the beginning of the mountain range that was between America and Africa, in which it would have dissolved into the ocean. Edit: At least that's what I could understand, I don't know if I interpreted correctly

[@claudiabaumann522]

Love it 👍🏼

[@matttownsend7119]

Thanks for this, does a great job of bringing tectonics alive. Also, shape accommodations of large continents when joining or splitting shows how crustal scale faults could be reactivated to accommodate the intra-plate movement. Given that you already encode information in the display (colour for height) would it be possible to add recognised crustal scale faults/slip zones?

[@anubhavpal5782]

Wonder how it would have looked like in the rift valley between south america and africa just after they had separated before the water moved in ?

[@dantolson1697]

Pretty much like the Great Rift Valley in East Africa, today.

[@koala71783]

this is cool i think this is cool that ther is an island in the middle of atlantic like iceland at 80 million years ago.i wonder what its like there, does it have a name

[@koala71783]

nevermind i found it "Rio Grande Rise" it has grantie rocks and evidense of flightless birds Yey☺

[@pba4591]

Cool!

[@Chris.Davies]

#MapsWithoutZealandia. :( I know this is tracing hot spots, but still... How about another one from the reverse angle, so we can see what happened to Zealandia?

[@mrbyzantine0528]

What are your thoughts on the Amazon-Congo paleoriver?

[@hojoinhisarcher]

next to smashing up cars in russia and girls dancing to elvis,this is my fave vid :)

[@je9732]

Was there no ice age in the southern hemisphere

[@tomhowington]

Chris, your map is close but it's not right. I understand it can't be perfect but South America was not married to Africa. They never bordered, they collided yes, but never bordered. South America however was married or bordered to North America. Look at my map, you'll see. Awesome video, i wish i could put my map together like that.

[@bashudevpathak1798]

Wagenar

[@jakzfourdeserttwee7037]

Water / Sea = No space Water / Space Own = Grewing Space up Continents = Space Super Connect = SuperContinent World Connect = Pangea / "Your name own"

[@seventhson27]

SO, where are the "hot spots & hot spot tracks?"

[@JungleJargon]

The continents broke apart 100 years after the global flood. Animals were separated by the split between South America and Africa. Sediment layers and fossils buried by the global flood line up. Glacial markings go from south to north in India on top of the sediments deposited by the global flood. Animals in the Arctic were quick frozen as result of the breakup. People never made it to South America from Africa because they were too busy trying to build the Tower of Babel.

[@paulbrower4265]

If you aren't joking, then you are crazy.

[@JungleJargon]

@@paulbrower4265 Did you forget that the mammoths and forests and other animals got quick frozen? 🥶

[@hurricanemegan8092]

Your crazy. 😂

[@JungleJargon]

@@hurricanemegan8092 Sooner or later everyone is going to have to face the fact that the continents broke apart in the days of Peleg, 100 years after the global flood. * It’s the reason for the glacial striations stamped on top of bedrock like a gigantic seal in South America, Africa, India and Australia from glaciers that were moving from south to north from the time when they were all still connected to Antarctica at the South Pole. Of course this was after the sediment layers from the global flood were deposited. * It’s the reason fossils and sediment layers line up between South America, Africa, Madagascar, India and Australia. (The fossils and sediment layers were deposited first and then the continents broke apart, 100 years after the global flood.) * It’s also the reason there are many frozen animals and forest ecosystems buried by tsunamis from the rise of sea levels in North America and Siberia as the continents were being shoved into the Arctic from the centrifugal force after the earth broke apart, possibly due to hardening of the sediments and other factors. * It’s the reason animals made it to South America from Africa and humans did not since they were still trying to build the Tower of Babel before the breakup of the continents. Jaguars were separated from leopards, greater grisons were separated from African honey badgers, tapirs were separated from …tapirs and all of the other animals arrived at various places around the world before the breakup of the continents. * It’s the reason why the lifespan of humans was cut in half a second time since the global flood from a less than 500 year lifespan to a less than 250 year lifespan. * It’s the reason why the meaning of the word Peleg in Hebrew that meant “divided” turned into “as (where) the waters flow” in the later Aramaic form of Hebrew. That’s quite an impressive change in meaning. * It’s the reason people isolated into family groups and began speaking their own language. (Everything that happens is of course by the power of God.) …And now you know the rest of the story, the whole story.

[@pba4591]

hi

[@jakzfourdeserttwee7037]

By the way, Your Video is getting alomst Square. and Your Camera a bit old.