Embracing Uncertainty to Resolve Polar Wander

Plain language summary: Records of Earth's ancient magnetic field preserved in rocks provide valuable information for understanding past tectonic plate motions. These “paleomagnetic” records are collected from individual rock samples and subsequently grouped to develop global-scale paths called apparent polar wander (APW) paths. However, the standard methods for analyzing and grouping paleomagnetic data are limited in the way they propagate and quantify uncertainties, and the consequences of these limitations are not known. In this study, we address these limitations through the introduction of a new methodological approach, which we use to study a large data set of paleomagnetic data from North America for the past 60 million years. We demonstrate that through our new methodology it is possible to generate APW paths with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution, which may offer new insights into Earth's deep time evolution.