The amalgamation of Pangea: Paleomagnetic and geological observations revisited
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The supercontinent Pangea formed by the subduction of the Iapetus and Rheic oceans between Gondwana, Laurentia, and Baltica during mid-to-late Paleozoic times. However, there remains much debate regarding how this amalgamation was achieved. Most paleogeographic models based on paleomagnetic data argue that the juxtaposition of Gondwana and Laurussia (Laurentia-Baltica) was achieved via long-lasting highly oblique convergence in the late Paleozoic. In contrast, many geology-based reconstructions suggest that the collision between the two continents was likely initiated via a Gondwanan promontory comprising the Iberian, Armorican, and Bohemian massifs, and parts of the basement units in the Alpine orogen during the Early Devonian. To help resolve this discrepancy, we present an updated compilation of high-quality paleopoles of mid-to-late Paleozoic ages (spanning Middle Ordovician and Carboniferous times) from Gondwana, Laurentia, and Baltica. These paleopoles were evaluated with the Van der Voo selection criteria, corrected for inclination error where necessary, and were used to revise their apparent polar wander (APW) paths. The revised APW paths were constructed using an innovative approach in which age errors, A95 ovals, and Q-factors of individual paleopoles are taken into account. By combining the resulting APW paths with existing geological data and field relationships in the European Variscides, we provide mid-to-late Paleozoic paleogeographic reconstructions which indicate that the formation of Pangea was likely initiated at 400 Ma via the collision between Laurussia and a ribbon-like Gondwanan promontory that was itself formed by a scissor-like opening of the Paleotethys Ocean, and that the amalgamation culminated in the mostly orthogonal convergence between Gondwana and Laurussia.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".