Scotia, Plates, Kenny Lienhard

The Plate in detail

Scotia, seed 19

Plate 19 of 52 · one of one

Traits

Palette: Lapis
Structure: Syncline
Event: Unconformity
Faults: One
Scale: Standard
Hang: Level
Accent: Single
Heading: North-northeast, 16.4°
Speed: 1.31 cm a year

History

The past. At the ice age peak, sea ice covered almost three quarters of the plate’s sea every winter, at least five degrees further north than today, and it drew back between about 17,000 and 10,000 years ago. The Patagonian ice sheet buried most of the plate’s land in Tierra del Fuego and reached out over its shelf, while the sea stood more than 100 metres lower.

50 million years ago: Small ocean basins began to open as South America and Antarctica pulled apart, the start of the Scotia Sea.
30 million years ago: Seafloor spreading began on the West Scotia Ridge.
15 million years ago: Back-arc spreading was under way on this plate's eastern edge, behind the South Sandwich arc.
6 million years ago: The West Scotia Ridge stopped spreading.

Sources: Lhardy et al. 2021, Climate of the Past 17:1139; Allen et al. 2011, Quaternary Science Reviews 30:2446; Collins et al. 2012, Paleoceanography 27; Crosta et al. 2022, Climate of the Past 18:1729; Khoo et al. 2025, Climate of the Past 21:299; Davies et al. 2020, Earth-Science Reviews 204:103152; Lambeck et al. 2014, PNAS 111:15296 · Eagles and Jokat 2014, Tectonophysics 611:28 · Livermore et al. 2005, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 236:459 · Larter et al. 2003, Geological Society London Special Publications 219:255

Onchain

The file

95,818bytes, the whole work

74,112bytes of code that draws it

5,758bytes of its record, plain text

0network requests

One HTML file, to be etched to Ethereum in full: the code that draws the work (151,144 bytes before compression), this plate’s settings and its record. Nothing is fetched from anywhere else. It reads your clock and slides the view to where the plate is today.

engine sha256 a7fbc03acc0fc9ba343881bb88ddaf2b7564564d8bc9cbed16e75e47e01fb3f2

The record inside it

The plate: Scotia, a minor plate in Bird’s PB2002 model: 1,700,717 km², 98% ocean
Its motion: A pole at 31.21°S 99.56°W turning 0.175° per million years; at its centre 1.3 cm a year, heading north-northeast
What covers it: deep ocean 64%, slope and ridge 27%, shelf sea 6%, boreal forest 1%, and four more
Its past: Its account of the last 30,000 years, with its source
Deep history: Four dated events, the oldest 50 million years ago, each with its source
Its outline: 131 points, to a hundredth of a degree
Licence: CC0 1.0, no rights reserved

Read the record

Sources

The plate, its outline and its motionBird, P. (2003). An updated digital model of plate boundaries. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 4(3), 1027.
What covers it, which chose the paletteESA CCI Land Cover and Water Bodies, ETOPO 2022, Köppen-Geiger climate maps, NSIDC Sea Ice Index.

Scotia

Finished