“Intraplate earthquakes and seismic activity.”
This press release full of misinformation is a prime example of the incompetence of today’s California universities. The New Madrid Fault system and its associated earthquakes IS NOT an example of “intraplate earthquakes” as claimed. They ARE an example of “interplate earthquakes,” because the New Madrid fault is the remnant of an ancient continental rift in the North American Plate which continental drift opened and then closed together again while leaving the divided plate margins of the old rift free to continue colliding and generating seismic activity not unlike other plate boundaries. In other words, the inter-plate activity is occurring between two margins of the same continental plate, which were destined to divide the North American Plate into two separate continental plates, until the rifting was halted by a change in continental drift and the rift became incompletely closed.
The example of the seismic activity at Yellowstone National Park is a different type of activity unrelated to the rifting of the New Madrid Fault or today’s comparable rifting of a smaller East Africa plate from the main African continental plate.
It should also be noted that the major rivers of the North American Plate are located along major fractures in the North American Plate. Examples are the Mississippi River, Ohio River, Wabash River, Missouri River, Red River, and others. Prior to a plate separating from what was to become today’s Europe, spinning around, and then slamming into the North American plate to become its eastern seacoast, the ancient Ohio River ran downstream from the Himalayan sized mountains of present day Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky eastwards to empty into the sea. It was redirected to the Gulf of Mexico much later in time after the continental plate collision along the eastern coasts created the Appalachian mountain ranges.
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