Improved Plate-Hotspot Modeling

(2/27/05) The recent contribution of Wessel, Harada, and Kroenke at the Fall, 2004, AGU (link) is a natural next step in modeling Pacific plate motions relative to hotspots. By taking the seamount catalog, applying Harada and Hamano's modeling techniques, and leaving hotspot location as an unknown to be solved for, the results WHK have come up with are very promising.
The big limitation, of course, is coming up with precise and accurate isotopic dates to more fully test and time-parameterize the model. My suggestion is: incorporate the Tuamotu and Nazca ridges. I showed (with David Handschumacher) in 1981 that the two ridges probably originated from the same sublithospheric melting anomaly centered on the Pacific-Nazca (Farallon) ridge between magnetic chrons 11 and 21. Thus, when reconstructed, the intersection of the restored ridges provides ages of the ridges. So, assuming a correct geomagnetic time scale, at least part of the kinematic model could be constrained.

Update: (3/2/05) One could also incorporate the islands and seamounts of the Easter to Sala-y-Gomez chain (assuming that they formed from an Easter hotspot largely located beneath the Nazca plate). However, given the need to rotate them to the Pacific plate and their age uncertainty (which would make their rotated locations less certain), and the lack of tightly spaced (in time) Pacific-Nazca reconstructions since 25 Ma, this seems less promising.

Original Post Link: http://mesoplates.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F9234EE50D713CDC!139.entry