When Gondwana started breaking apart in Jurassic times there was not a single clear break, as occurred subsequently in the South Atlantic Ocean, for example. The animation shows what happened to five smaller fragments that initially lay off southern Africa - in the break-up zone - and how they became isolated fragments, distant from the main continents, today.

The present-day coastlines of the three main continental fragments - Africa, Antarctica, South America - are shown in black. The post-break-up paths of points representing these continents are shown in grey with black dots at intervals of 5 My. Three smaller fragments that initially stayed with Africa (The Malvinas Plateau, Maurice Ewing Bank and South Georgia) progressively split off Africa as they follwed the green pathways shown, moving westwards with respect to our fixed mantle reference frame from 165 to 140 Ma. None of them crossed the location of the Bouvet plume head (orange star) and so ended up attached to the South America plate.

Two fragments, Beira High and Limpopia, followed the blue paths. The Beira High re-joined Africa after only a short period of separation. Limpopia, meanwhile, followed Antarctica southwards until about 132 Ma when it rifted off Antarctica and started following Africa to the north. Its U-turn occurred as it approached the Bouvet plume head and the active transform in the oceanic crust switched from west of Limpopia to east of it.

The central role of the Bouvet plume is demonstrated in our conservative model that requires a minimum of hypothesis and conforms to a geometry of persistent forward ocean growth everywhere. The time-scale for the Lower Cretaceous is indicated by the colours within the Africa-Antarctica Corridor (AAC) immediately east of Limpopia. The AAC seems immune to the complexities further west. Perhaps its persistence can be attributed to the mid-ocean ridge within it always lying close to the line joining the Bouvet plume head to that of the (future) Marion plume.

The fact that the model for ocean growth was developed independently from that for the movements of Africa with respect to the mantle reference but still gives this logical result with smooth mantle-paths for all fragments is reassuring that the model is robust.