| Summary: | Previous paleontological studies have used the differences in faunas (in the present case, now extinct fossil occurrences of trilobites) between two or more continental blocks (presently the Svalbard Archipelago, North America, and Scandinavia) to infer separation of these blocks by large distances up to several thousands of kilometers ca. 550 to 420 million years ago due to global plate tectonics processes. The present study shows that this method is biased because previous studies undermined factors such as climatic belts and (topographic) faunal barriers such as large, mountain-building cracks in the Earth's crust. The study builds on previous work on seismic data in the Barents Sea and Svalbard, which identified continuous, thousands of kilometers long, tens of kilometers thick networks of cracks extending from northwestern Russia to Svalbard and potentially northern Greenland, which formed 650 to 550 million years ago, therefore demonstrating a connection between all these continental blocks at 550-420 Ma.
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