This collapsing of the shields creates compressional areas within overall extensional plates, as can be seen along the fault lines of the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

This is the different interpretation of compressional areas which I referred to earlier, which I believe occurs in other key areas. For example, it is believed that the Juan De Fuca and Gorda plates are converging with North America, because they have the characteristics of compressional fault lines. However, I suspect that the degree of subduction is in reality far less than that required to swallow entire pre-historic sea-beds, and the compression between the plates in that instance is due to a collapsing of those plates on an increasing sphere ( see: ptss isostatic compensation ).

In this expanding and contracting model, without the need for these seafloors to account for a constant diameter, Europe is simply a tear in the plate which, like the Himalayas and the American West coast plates, becomes compressional as the plate falls back onto itself.

( the old Expdaning Earth theory has interesting observations about Africa in relation to this. They will be outlined in the Expanding Earth Sub-section: eess )