Young tracks of hotspots and current plate velocities

Plate motions relative to the hotspots over the past 4 to 7 Myr are investigated with a goal of determining the shortest time interval over which reliable volcanic propagation rates and segment trends can be estimated. The rate and trend uncertainties are objectively determined from the dispersion of volcano age and of volcano location and are used to test the mutual consistency of the trends and rates. Ten hotspot data sets are constructed from overlapping time intervals with various durations and starting times. Our preferred hotspot data set, HS3, consists of two volcanic propagation rates and eleven segment trends from four plates. It averages plate motion over the past ≈5.8 Myr, which is almost twice the…