Fig 1.
The GPlates Portal’s multilayered architecture.
A three-layered architecture consists of presentation, logic and data layers. The presentation layer includes the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the main canvas for 3D rendering. The logic layer contains a number of web services written in Python and deployed in Django Web Framework [7]. The data layer focuses on the storage and retrieval of data.
Fig 2.
Workflow for designing a virtual globe.
The details involved in this workflow are summarized in S1 Text.
Fig 3.
SRTM15 PLUS Cesium globe northward view of the region around the Mariana Arc and Trench.
Recently added multibeam bathymetry data have substantially increased resolution of small-scale features in this region.
Fig 4.
Cesium globe view of seafloor sediment types draped over a digital elevation model with an overlay of major rivers (blue lines).
Several features of interest are highlighted.
Fig 5.
Cesium globe southeastward view of the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula where the vertical gravity gradient grid, overlain by a digital elevation model, reveals the buried circular structure related to the Chicxulub Impact Crater (CIC) that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species, straddling the coastline of the Yucatan Peninsula [21].
Impact-generated multi-ring gravity anomalies can be used to compute the impact’s size and other characteristics [21]. The image also reveals the buried extinct Jurassic mid-ocean ridge (MOR) of the Gulf of Mexico [14].
Fig 6.
Identical view illustrating the difference between the EMAG2 version with directional gridding (top) and with isotropic gridding (bottom).
The observer location is south of New Zealand looking westward at the Southern Ocean, with Antarctica on the southern side and Australia on northern side in each image.
Fig 7.
Cesium globe of the magnetic anomaly identification data [25] focussed on the South Atlantic.
Colored circles represent individual magnetic anomaly identifications color-coded by magnetic chron name. Seafloor-spreading between Africa and South America is represented by the magnetic anomaly picks in the South Atlantic, between Africa and Antarctica along the Southwest Indian Ridge, between South America and Antarctica in the Weddell Sea and several episodes of back-arc basin opening in the Scotia Sea.
Fig 8.
Cesium globe illustrating a reconstruction of the combined marine and continental gravity grid at 100 million years ago, centered on the western Gondwana continents, including South America on the left and Africa on the right.
Fig 9.
A. 2D-map view of global dynamic topography in the mantle frame of reference at 80 Ma for case 1 of ref. 31. Reconstructed coastlines are shown in black, subduction zones in blue (triangles indicate dip direction), mid-ocean ridges and transform faults in red, deforming areas in grey, and surface velocities as white vectors. B. 2D-map view of global dynamic topography in the plate frame of reference at 80 Ma, with present-day coastlines in black. C. Evolution of dynamic topography along the East Brazil Rift System (dark-red rectangle in B).