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Fig. 6.15
Predicted paleolatitudes (
top
) and declinations
(
bottom
) for a point in N. America at (55
ı
N, 90
ı
W) since
the late Triassic, based on the same data used for the
construction of the APW path of Fig.
6.14
. No attempt
has been done to remove outliers. The
solid lines
represent
cubic spline regression curves, built using a smoothing
parameter “ D 50.
Dots
are paleolatitudes and declinations
predicted by the spherical spline APW path of Fig.
6.14
fitting estimators of the corresponding time se-
ries, although the APW paths from which they are
derived are by themselves best fitting spherical
curves of paleomagnetic pole time series on the
unit sphere.
In summary, we can choose to have alter-
natively best fitting regression curves of pale-
olatitude and declination, sacrificing the possi-
bility to have a best fitting APW path through
the paleopoles, or the vice versa. What is the
“correct” or the “best” approach? It depends
from what we consider to be our data. For the
criticizers of the method proposed by Schet-
tino and Scotese (
2005
), the primary input data
