TRUE POLAR WANDER DURING THE MIDDLE PALEOZOIC

True polar wander would be recognized paleomagnetically as identical a pparent polar wander paths for all surface elements. The apparent pola r wander paths for the Late Ordovician-Late Devonian interval for Laur entia, Baltica and Gondwana have nearly identical looping shapes that can be brought into superposition. The paths of these continents are w ell documented, but even the less well known paths of South China and Siberia reveal similar lengths. The resulting reconstruction places th e northern Andean margin of South America opposite the Appalachian mar gin of Laurentia, with Baltica and Laurentia adjoined in the fit of Bu llard and colleagues. Siberia and South China would be to the north of Africa, if their paleopoles are taken at face value. For middle Paleo zoic time, there is of course no information about oceanic domains, bu t it is interesting that all continental elements, insofar as is known , appear to have similar apparent polar wander tracks that can be plau sibly superimposed without causing overlap in the positions of the con tinents. Albeit speculatively, because of the lack of information abou t the oceanic elements, it is suggested in this study that true polar wander may have occurred with a cumulative magnitude of about 75-degre es during a 75 Ma interval, and may have been of greater magnitude tha n the apparent polar wander due to relative motions during the middle Paleozoic. This middle Paleozoic rate of true polar wander appears to have been an order of magnitude greater than the average rate during t he late Mesozoic and Tertiary.