I find it really, really hard to believe that what is being taught today in college is 'old' history - the 'history' still happened - the continents are moving and coming together, subducting and diverging - that all still happened over the course of 4.6 Billion years to form our current state of the continents.

I think what that article is saying is more on the mechanism versus changing history. Its been theory that its convection in the mantle - Zhong and Gurnis are defining/discussing the dynamic between the plates and mantle.

It still doesn't change why there is coal in Colorado or oil in Texas or gold in California or the Basin and Range in Western North America or the Rocky Mountains.

Lets take a real--world 'today' example to mirror why there might have been an ocean in the middle of the north american plate (which did occur several times - all that limestone? it comes from shallow Oceans...take a look all over the eastern half of the continent) - lets say we speed up time a bit and the Pacific Plate keeps moving Northward in regards to the North American plate - Now lets say that a channel somehow opens up between the central valley in california and the ocean - isn't it a very simple thing for the ocean to rush in and fill the valley? I'm not suggesting this will happen but that's what did happen after pangea broke up - The continent didn't sink, the ocean just came on in until more mountain building events caused the continent to form the mountains. Mountain building events usually (I said usually not always) happen when 2 continents/plates collide/subduct/obduct/. And then there are sea level rise and falls along with Ice Ages to keep everything interesting. The sea level can change as much as 600 feet.

Canie