Interregional geological maps hold important information for geodynamic models. Here, we use such maps to visualize major conformable and unconformable contacts at interregional scales and at the level of geologic series from the Upper Jurassic onward across North and South America, Europe, Africa and Australia. We extract hiatus information from these paleogeological maps, which we plot in a paleogeographical reference frame to link the maps to the plate and plume modes of mantle convection. We assume that interregional patterns of hiatus surfaces are proxy records of continent-scale mantle-induced vertical motion of the lithosphere. We find significant differences in the distribution of hiatus across and between continents at the timescale of geologic series, that is ten to a few tens of millions of years (Myrs). This is smaller than the mantle transit time, which, as the timescale of convection, is about 100–200 Myrs. Our results imply that different timescales for convection and topography in convective support must be an integral component of time-dependent geodynamic Earth models, consistent with the presence of a weaker upper mantle relative to the lower mantle. Additional geological constraints together with interregional geological maps at the resolution of stages (1–2 Myrs), are needed to assist in future geodynamic interpretations of interregional geologic hiatus.

Histories of large-scale horizontal and vertical lithosphere motion hold important information on mantle convection. Here, we compare continent-scale hiatus maps as a proxy for mantle flow induced dynamic topography and plate motion variations in the Atlantic and Indo-Australian realms since the Upper Jurassic, finding they frequently correlate, except when plate boundary forces may play a significant role. This correlation agrees with descriptions of asthenosphere flow beneath tectonic plates in terms of Poiseuille/Couette flow, as it explicitly relates plate motion changes, induced by evolving basal shear forces, to non-isostatic vertical motion of the lithosphere. Our analysis reveals a timescale, on the order of a geological series, between the occurrence of continent-scale hiatus and plate motion changes. This is consistent with the presence of a weak upper mantle. It also shows a spatial scale for interregional hiatus, on the order of 2000–3000 km in diameter, which can be linked by fluid dynamic analysis to active upper mantle flow regions. Our results suggest future studies should pursue large-scale horizontal and vertical lithosphere motion in combination, to track the expressions of past mantle flow. Such studies would provide powerful constraints for adjoint-based geodynamic inverse models of past mantle convection.

Plate motion changes provide powerful constrains on plate tectonic forces. North America is ideal to explore these forces. We use recently published high‐temporal resolution plate reconstructions of North America, which reveal a velocity slow‐down at 17 Ma, roughly coeval with the eruption of the Yellowstone plume, together with a stratigraphic analysis of hiatus surfaces across the continent, which provides proxy information for paleotopography. Using a simple Couette/Poiseuille flow models we estimate asthenosphere flow beneath North America and its impact on Neogene plate motion. We find that North America's Neogene plate motion change can be explained by Poiseuille flow in the asthenosphere generated upon the arrival of the Yellowstone plume and that the flow length‐scale matches the extent of hiatus surfaces. While plume driven upper mantle flow constitutes a geodynamically viable model to explain North America's Neogene plate motion change it provides an intrinsic link between vertical and horizontal plate motions.

SUMMARY: The ability to construct time-trajectories of mantle flow is crucial to move from studies of instantaneous to time-dependent earth models and to exploit geological constraints for mantle convection modelling. However mantle convection is chaotic and subject to the butterfly effect: the trajectories of two identical mantle convection models initialized with slightly different temperature fields diverge exponentially in time until they become uncorrelated. Because one may use seismic inferences about the mantle state as a starting or terminal condition to project mantle flow forward or backward in time, and because the seismic inference is invariably subject to uncertainties, this seemingly would rule out any construction of robust mantle flow trajectories. Here we build upon earlier work which showed that assimilation of the horizontal component of the surface velocity field from a known reference model allows one to overcome the butterfly effect and to construct robust mantle flow trajectories, regardless of the choice of the initial state perturbation. To this end, we use high resolution 3-D spherical mantle convection models in four end-member configurations: an isoviscous purely internally heated model, an isoviscous purely bottom heated model, a model with a radial increase in viscosity along with pure internal heating as well as a model that combines the effects of radial viscosity increase, internal and bottom heating. In order to capture the impact of seismic filtering, we perturb the initial temperature fields of these end-member models through either radial or horizontal smoothing of the temperature field or the application of the tomographic filter of seismic model S20RTS. We assess the quality of the constructed model trajectories via a number of statistical measures as well as comparisons of their dynamic topography histories. The latter is an essential step since mantle flow cannot be directly observed but has to be inferred via its surface manifestations. Importantly, linking mantle flow to surface observations yields patterns representable on a latitude–longitude grid similar to meteorological observables such as precipitation. This invites the application of meteorological quality metrics, such as the power ratio and Taylor diagram, to assess the quality of mantle flow trajectories. We introduce these metrics for the first time in the context of mantle convection and demonstrate their viability based on the compact manner in which they summarize model performance.

The planform is a defining feature of mantle convection. It can be gleaned from the stratigraphic record by mapping the continent-scale distribution of hiatus and no hiatus surfaces serving as a proxy for high and low dynamic topography. We carry this out for all continents apart from Antarctica for eight geological series since the Upper Jurassic, showing that: (i) the planform as indicated by our maps contains wavelengths of the order of 1000 km, smaller than the convective scales implied by the geoid. (ii) The planform changes on timescales of geological series (10–20 Myrs), smaller than the mantle transit time. (iii) Flood basalt eruptions are frequently preceded by hiatus surfaces. (iv) Some hiatus surfaces are not linked to any known plume, potentially reflecting the lateral transport of material in the asthenosphere. Our results reveal the importance of mantle viscosity stratification in shaping the convective planform and the resulting dynamic topography. Geodynamic Earth models should aim to reproduce the global characteristics of our maps, as well as specific regional events identified in this work. Finally, we separate the effects of sea-level variation from regional changes in base level induced by dynamic topography by contrasting the stratigraphic evolution of different regions.