Kinematic and Reconstruction Modeling with Continuously Varying Parameters

There is a kind of frustration involved in interpolation of any numerical quantity, particularly if there are uncertainties involved in the input data. Uncertainties have been a passion for many plate tectonic workers; a number of important advances in the estimation of uncertainties in oceanic plate reconstructions and their composition into global reconstruction sets provide some level of confidence in the quality of the reconstructions. However, interpolations between reconstructions and corresponding, derivative kinematics have not been satisfactorily explored. There has been little progress in kinematic inference since the pioneering finite difference calculations of Pitman and Talwani (1972) and Weissel and Hayes (1972).