Rodinia was a Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.26–0.90 billion years ago and broke up 750–633 million years ago. Valentine & Moores 1970 were probably the first to recognise a Precambrian supercontinent, which they named 'Pangaea I'. It was renamed 'Rodinia' by McMenamin & McMenamin 1990 who also were the first to produce a reconstruction and propose a temporal framework for the supercontinent.
The African Plate, also known as the Nubian Plate, is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American Plate and South American Plate to the west ; the Arabian Plate and Somali Plate to the east; the Eurasian Plate, Aegean Sea Plate and Anatolian Plate to the north; and the Antarctic Plate to the south.
The East African Rift (EAR) or East African Rift System (EARS) is an active continental rift zone in East Africa. The EAR began developing around the onset of the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago. It was formerly considered to be part of a larger Great Rift Valley that extended north to Asia Minor.
The Pan-African orogeny was a series of major Neoproterozoic orogenic events which related to the formation of the supercontinents Gondwana and Pannotia about 600 million years ago. This orogeny is also known as the Pan-Gondwanan or Saldanian Orogeny. The Pan-African orogeny and the Grenville orogeny are the largest known systems of orogenies on Earth. The sum of the continental crust formed in the Pan-African orogeny and the Grenville orogeny makes the Neoproterozoic the period of Earth's history that has produced most continental crust.
The Afar Triple Junction is located along a divergent plate boundary dividing the Nubian, Somali, and Arabian plates. This area is considered a present-day example of continental rifting leading to seafloor spreading and producing an oceanic basin. Here, the Red Sea Rift meets the Aden Ridge and the East African Rift. The latter extends a total of 6,500 kilometers (4,000 mi) from the Afar Triangle to Mozambique.
The Aden Ridge is a part of an active oblique rift system located in the Gulf of Aden, between Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula to the north. The rift system marks the divergent boundary between the Somali and Arabian tectonic plates, extending from the Owen Transform Fault in the Arabian Sea to the Afar Triple Junction or Afar Plume beneath the Gulf of Tadjoura in Djibouti.
The Owen Fracture Zone (OFZ), though misnamed a fracture zone, is a transform fault in the northwest Indian Ocean that separates the Arabian and African Plates from the Indian Plate. Extending north-northeast from where the Carlsberg Ridge meets the Sheba ridge in the south to the Makran Subduction Zone in the north, it represents the port side of the northward motion of the Indian subcontinent during the Late Cretaceous–Palaeogene break-up of Gondwana. Slip along the Owen Fracture Zone is occurring at 2 mm (0.079 in)/yr, the slowest rate on Earth, which means the Arabian Plate moves northward faster than the Indian Plate.
The Rodrigues Triple Junction (RTJ), also known as the Central Indian [Ocean] Triple Junction (CITJ) is a geologic triple junction in the southern Indian Ocean where three tectonic plates meet: the African Plate, the Indo-Australian Plate, and the Antarctic Plate. The triple junction is named for the island of Rodrigues which lies 1,000 km (620 mi) north-west of it.
The Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR) is a mid-ocean ridge located along the floors of the south-west Indian Ocean and south-east Atlantic Ocean. A divergent tectonic plate boundary separating the Somali Plate to the north from the Antarctic Plate to the south, the SWIR is characterised by ultra-slow spreading rates (only exceeding those of the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic) combined with a fast lengthening of its axis between the two flanking triple junctions, Rodrigues (20°30′S70°00′E) in the Indian Ocean and Bouvet (54°17′S1°5′W) in the Atlantic Ocean.
Gondwana was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent. It was formed by the accretion of several cratons, beginning c. 800 to 650Ma with the East African Orogeny, the collision of India and Madagascar with East Africa, and culminating in c. 600 to 530 Ma with the overlapping Brasiliano and Kuunga orogenies, the collision of South America with Africa, and the addition of Australia and Antarctica, respectively. Eventually, Gondwana became the largest piece of continental crust of the Palaeozoic Era, covering an area of some 100,000,000 km2 (39,000,000 sq mi), about one-fifth of the Earth's surface. It fused with Euramerica during the Carboniferous to form Pangea. It began to separate from northern Pangea (Laurasia) during the Triassic, and started to fragment during the Early Jurassic. The final stages of break-up, involving the separation of Antarctica from South America and Australia, occurred during the Paleogene (from around 66 to 23 million years ago. Gondwana was not considered a supercontinent by the earliest definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia, and Siberia were separated from it. To differentiate it from the Indian region of the same name, it is also commonly called Gondwanaland.
This is a list of articles related to plate tectonics and tectonic plates.
The Seychelles Microcontinent is a microcontinent underlying Seychelles in the western Indian Ocean made of Late Precambrian rock.
The Madagascar Plate or Madagascar block is a tectonic plate holding the island of Madagascar. It was once attached to the Gondwana supercontinent and later the Indo-Australian Plate.
The East African Orogeny (EAO) is the main stage in the Neoproterozoic assembly of East and West Gondwana along the Mozambique Belt.
The Saharan Metacraton is a term used by some geologists to describe a large area of continental crust in the north-central part of Africa. Whereas a craton is an old and stable part of the lithosphere, the term "metacraton" is used to describe a craton that has been remobilized during an orogenic event, but where the characteristics of the original craton are still identifiable. The geology of the continent has only been partially explored, and other names have been used to describe the general area that reflect different views of its nature and extent. These include "Nile Craton", "Sahara Congo Craton", "Eastern Saharan Craton" and "Central Saharan Ghost Craton". This last term is because the older rocks are almost completely covered by recent sediments and desert sands, making geological analysis difficult.
The East Antarctic Shield or Craton is a cratonic rock body that covers 10.2 million square kilometers or roughly 73% of the continent of Antarctica. The shield is almost entirely buried by the East Antarctic Ice Sheet that has an average thickness of 2200 meters but reaches up to 4700 meters in some locations. East Antarctica is separated from West Antarctica by the 100–300 kilometer wide Transantarctic Mountains, which span nearly 3,500 kilometers from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. The East Antarctic Shield is then divided into an extensive central craton that occupies most of the continental interior and various other marginal cratons that are exposed along the coast.
The Lwandle Plate is one of three tectonic microplates, along with the Rovuma Plate and Victoria Plate, that make up the African Plate with the Somali Plate and the Nubian Plate. Its discovery is very recent, so the velocity of the plate is neither well known nor well understood. Many experiments are ongoing to quantify this. The Lwandle Plate lies between 30°E and 50°E, sharing a boundary with the Nubian, Somali, and Antarctic Plates.
The geology of Socotra is part of the national geology of Yemen. Ancient Precambrian metamorphic rocks are intruded by younger igneous rocks, overlain by limestones and other marine sediments that deposited during marine transgression periods in the Cretaceous and the past 66 million years of the Cenozoic. The island is on the Somali Plate, which rifted away from the Arabian mainland within the past 60 million years.
The Mascarene Basin is an oceanic basin in the western Indian Ocean. It was formed as the tectonic plate of the Indian subcontinent pulled away from the Madagascar Plate about 66–90 Mya, following the breaking up of the Gondwana supercontinent.
