SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT ON SUPERCONTINENT AND GLOBAL PLATE RECONSTRUCTION

Plate reconstruction, as a multidisciplinary scientific integration, has become the core and frontier of global tectonics research since A. Wegener. In the big data era as the 21st century, the multidisciplinary collaborative innovation is even more distinctive. However, any expert has his own specialized fields as well as limitation, group endeavor is required for plate reconstruction. There are fourteen schools of thought in general:(1) The Scotese group being an earlier group based on computer techniques; (2) The Piper group solely based on paleomagnetic polar wandering for plate reconstruction; (3) The group led by Golonka focusing on the combination of lithofacies palaeogeography and paleoenvironmental reconstruction; (4) The Robert Hall group on plate reconstruction specifically in the western Pacific and the southeast Asia; (5) The Lawrence Lawver group with special interest in developing plate reconstruction software; (6) The Chen Xu group featured by palaeobiogeography and paleoclimate; (7) The Mueller group based on magnetic lineations and the rebuilding of ancient ocean bythemetry; (8) The Barsley group focusing on the ancient topography, terrain and sedimentary facies; (9) The Stampfli group to reconstruct the ancient paleomagnetic lineations based on ophiolites; (10) The Li Zhengxiang group based on paleomagnetic polar wandering and integrated correlation of geological events; (11) The Torsvik group focusing on deep-seated geophysical (tomography) data in corporation with paleomagentics; (12) The Cawood group making plate reconstruction based on detrital zircon age spectrums; (13) The Zhao Guochun group devoting to degenerated dynamics and collision orogenic events; (14) The Michael Gurnis group who broke the concept of rigid plate for dynamic topography reconstruction and deformed plate reconstruction. Each group also has its interest and emphasis on specific era. For examples, Since A. Wegener at the beginning of the last century up to now, many groups have been interesting in the reconstruction of the Pangea supercontinent 250 Ma; since early 1990s, more work has been rendered to the plate reconstruction of the Rodinia supercontient 1.0 Ga; and since the end of 1990s, Zhao Guochun and Rogers have paid more attention to the reconstruction of the Columbia supercontinent in Paleoproterozoic 1.8 Ga.