Review and critical assessment on plate reconstruction models for the South Atlantic

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104333Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Several West Gondwana pre-breakup fits have been proposed in the last 60 years.

  • Differences in South Atlantic reconstructions result from assumed deformation.

  • Geological inheritance and intraplate deformation play a pivotal role in tight-fit reconstruction models.

Abstract

The breakup of a supercontinent is a vital process of global tectonic evolution. How exactly West Gondwana and Pangea broke up is a controversial topic with many unanswered questions and problems that the reconstruction models attempt to solve. Since the mid-20th century in the course of modeling the South Atlantic tectonic evolution, several works contributed to the understanding of South America and Africa pre-breakup configuration, early stages of rift, and the kinematic involved in the rupture. However, these plate reconstruction models present several misfit problems. Here we review and analyze such misfits based on compiled geophysical and geological data by reproducing and comparing 15 reconstruction models since the pioneering work of Bullard et al. (1965). The location and magnitude of gaps and overlaps in each model are significantly different, in which fit differences mostly result from the assumed deformation. Nevertheless, a few similarities can be drawn, such as the maximum implemented overlap in the Central segment of the South Atlantic. We recognize that the accurate quantification of intraplate deformation is a challenge in refined models, and argue that South Atlantic models that restore intraplate deformation using geological and kinematic constraints tend to achieve a better fit.

Introduction

The geometrical fit of the South America and Africa margins is one of the cornerstones of continental drift theory (du Toit, 1937; Wegener, 1912). The divergence between these two plates led to the formation of the South and Equatorial Atlantic oceans during Cretaceous times. Although their jigsaw fit seems to be perfect, precise pre-drift plate reconstruction faces several misfit problems.

The first quantitative attempt to fit together South American and African plates was made by Bullard et al. (1965) assuming rigid plate behavior and a synchronous opening of South and Equatorial Atlantic oceans. Following models were also based on the concept of fully rigid plates, which means that little to no deformation during or subsequent to the breakup has taken place in the interior of the continent. However, these reconstructions resulted in considerable misfits mostly in the Equatorial Atlantic and/or in the southern South Atlantic. The finer adjustment of these two parts was impossible to carry out without assuming a diachronic opening and intraplate deformation.

Plate models with distributed intraplate deformation have managed to solve the previous problems with poor adjustments. These models assume that the stress related to the northward propagation of the South Atlantic opening was probably accommodated in lithospheric discontinuities within South American and African plates. For instance, the Transbrasiliano lineament is a major structural element that has been suggested to accommodate intraplate deformation in the South American plate (Cordani et al., 2013; Moulin et al., 2010; Pérez-Gussinyé et al., 2007; Richetti et al., 2018). Another important feature widely considered to accommodate relative plate motion is the Benue Trough area, which documents extensional deformation between sub-plates in Africa (Burke and Dewey, 1974; Guiraud and Maurin, 1992).

Here we review the plate reconstruction models that depict pre-breakup configuration of South America and Africa in the Pangea framework. We reproduce these models and compare them based on standardized features derived from an extensive geological and geophysical data compilation of these continents. We will argue here that despite the significant evolution of plate reconstruction models since the pioneering work of Bullard et al. (1965), the South America and Africa pre-drift puzzle has not been completely solved yet.

Section snippets

Geological framework

Geological history records the repeated occurrence of continental collision and breakup which led to the hypothesis that continents periodically amalgamate into large landmasses called supercontinents (Dewey, 1969; Kearey et al., 2009; Wilson, 1966; Zhong et al., 2007). The dispersal of a supercontinent can be caused by upwellings and thermal insulation beneath them (Gurnis, 1988; Lenardic et al., 2011; Li and Zhong, 2009) or by the extensional stress in the lithosphere caused by subduction

Data compilation

Reconstructing supercontinents is a complex process that requires many geodynamic concepts. When a reconstruction model is proposed, it must take into consideration geological, geophysical and tectonic factors in order to achieve a “best fit”. Identifying and correlating piercing points and assessing the data used to constrain the plate motion is a powerful tool to evaluate these models. Therefore, a wide literature review regarding South American and African continental geology supported by

Methodology

We compiled several reconstruction models published throughout the last decades and selected fifteen of those based on their relevance and available data to be reproduced and analyzed. Integration of data through GPlates v. 2.2.0 (Müller et al., 2018) allowed us to replicate the models. The GPlates plate-motion focuses on relative motion described by total reconstruction poles. This requires the motion parameters of each moving plate in relation to a fixed plate at a point in time. These plates

Results

Although it remains controversial how South America and Africa broke up, several reconstruction models strive to solve this problem. The first attempts of reconstructing West Gondwana were based on rigid plates without any intraplate deformation (e.g. Bullard et al., 1965; Keith Martin et al., 1981; Rabinowitz and LaBrecque, 1979; Vink, 1982). These result in overlaps and gaps of reconstructed continental blocks in which overlaps represent areas followed by extension and gaps characterize

Discussion

As shown in Fig. 9, Fig. 10, the locations and magnitudes of overlaps and gaps between these reproduced models are, in general, considerably different. However, the most striking similarities are the overlaps in the central segment of the South Atlantic, near the Campos/Kwanza and Santos/Benguela basins. A possible explanation for this hyper-extended crust in Campos and Kwanza basins is a rift migration mechanism (Araujo et al., 2023; Brune et al., 2014) that most likely would have equally

Conclusion

Reconstruction depicting pre-rift configuration of South America and Africa have been made using various methods and constraints, such as isobaths (Bullard et al., 1965), by fitting marine gravity and magnetic anomalies and seafloor data (Lawver et al., 1998; Pérez-Diaz and Eagles, 2014; Rabinowitz and LaBrecque, 1979; Reeves et al., 2016), by matching tectonic features (Keith Martin et al., 1981; Richetti et al., 2018) or by using a combined continental and marine geophysical and geological

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Juliana Fernandes Bonifacio: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Carlos Eduardo Ganade: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Funding acquisition. Anderson Costa dos Santos: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Ricardo Ivan Ferreira da Trindade: Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Petrobras (Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) (grant 2018/004429-0) and the Serrapilheira Institute (Rio de Janeiro) (grant 1709-21887) conceded to C.E.G. The authors would also like to thank their institutes for ongoing support and infrastructure. A.C.S. acknowledges the support of CAPES (process 88.881.177228/2018–01) and FAPERJ (APQ1 2019 n° 210.179/2019; JCNE 2022 n° 201.469/2022). We acknowledge the constructive comments and suggestions by two

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