Appendix. The structural unity of the reconstructed North Atlantic continent

Abstract

The map of chelozones (figure 4), which accompanies this short note, is a first attempt to show that when the pre-Tertiary North Atlantic continent is reconstructed in the manner described by Dr Miller, it has an essential structural unity. The almost perfect ‘jig-saw’ fit of the fundamental geological structural provinces of the North Atlantic continental masses suggests very strongly that their geographical fit is not accidental, and that they are the disrupted fragments of one originally continuous continent. Many workers have commented on the cyclical nature of past episodes of major structural activity in the continental basements (see, for example, the references quoted by Sutton 1963), and Canadian geologists in particular have pioneered the production of maps which delimit major structural provinces in the Precambrian shield areas. Each major structural province is an area of the continental shield which became reactivated over a certain extended period, during which it was crossed by mobile belts, involved in geosynclinal subsidence and finally became the locus of a series of major orogenic/metamorphic/ magmatic events which largely reworked its rock substance.