PANGAEA BREAKUP REVISITED: A NEW WEB INTERFACE FOR STUDENT INQUIRY

Digital animations that depict aspects of the Mesozoic to Cenozoic breakup of the supercontinent of Pangaea are abundant. However, most of these animations are limited in scope, due to issues such as lack of detail, unchangeable viewpoints, and interfaces that only permit passive (non-interactive) viewing. To address the need for a detailed, interactive, inquiry-based reconstruction of the breakup of Pangaea, we have developed a web interface that uses the Google Earth API (Application Program Interface) and depicts global tectonics during the past 150 million years. Continents and micro-continents were digitized in their present-day positions using the polygon tool in Google Earth. Stage poles for each land mass were primarily based on data from Torsvik et al. 2012. These 10 million year increments were interpolated to facilitate movements of continents and micro-continents in intervals of 1 million years.

Temporal animations for each continent and micro continent were assembled into a unified whole, producing an interactive visualization of the breakup of Pangaea. An incorporated time scale bar, activated by the <timespan> tag in Google Earth, allows the user to view the orientation of the continents at any selected time period over the past 150 million years. The user is also able to change the point of view of the virtual globe to any angle, adding versatility and interactivity to the animation. The web interface includes several specialized animations (KML Tours) that allow the user to fix the viewpoint of the animation to a specific present day location or a specific continent. These animations show the movement of surrounding continents with respect to a chosen location, such as Africa or the southern Atlantic Ocean. Continuing work is focused on creating exercises that use this web interface for student-centered inquiry. The exercises expand on important aspects of global tectonics by incorporating related geologic concepts and not focusing exclusively on continental drift.