Brief description
The EarthByte Group presents a tectonic model of the Indian Ocean, to accompany a study by Gibbons et al., (2012).
The dataset was created to investigate the first regional-scale tectonic model of the breakup of East Gondwana. The model shows that the breakup of East Gondwana started with the migration of a continental sliver, Argoland, in the Late Jurassic and was followed by breakup between Greater India and Australia-Antarctica in the Early Cretaceous, involving spreading reconfigurations, which left several sunken continental plateaus of Indian crust on the Australian plate. New evidence from seafloor off northwest Australia also shows that the majority of Greater India reached only about halfway up the West Australian margin, to the Wallaby-Zenith Plateaus.
The tectonic model and accompanying documentation may be downloaded from the EarthByte website. Input files are ready for use with GPlates, a free to download, interactive plate-tectonics visualization software program.
For further information, refer to the publications below:
Spatial Coverage And Location
text: East Indian Ocean; Greater India; West Australian Margin; Gondwana
