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| Accretionary Arc |
 Title text: The late Triassic rifting was caused by a dinosaur trying to use the control panel to escape a predator, but it was eaten before the continent could fully separate. |
Explanation
This comic describes Cueball and Ponytail escaping from a mob of angry people. Ponytail remembers a control panel, possibly referencing the universal control panel. They use it in reverse to split off a part of the North American continent and escape.
The "island arc" refers to the Taconic orogeny, when approximately 550 through 440 million years ago an island chain consisting of modern-day New England and Eastern Canada collided with the rest of modern-day North America, forming parts of the modern Piedmont region of the Appalachian Mountains.
The title text's "late Triassic rifting" refers to the South Georgia rift, where a rift valley formed along the southeastern United States during the late Triassic approximately 215 through 175 million years ago, but failed to separate the continent before the plate tectonics causing the rifting shifted, ending the rift (but leaving the geological history). The title text claims that this was due to a dinosaur attempting to use the control panel in a similar fashion, but the rift ended because it was eaten before completing the task like Cueball and Ponytail did.
See also 2577.
Transcript
- [Cueball and Ponytail are running to the right.]
- Cueball: They're right behind us!
- Ponytail: It's OK! I have a plan.
- [The field of view widens, showing an angry horde of people with weapons chasing Cueball and Ponytail.]
- Ponytail: This part of the continent used to be an island arc before it collided with North America.
- [Close up on Cueball and Ponytail. Cueball looks back to the left, toward the mob, while Ponytail pushes buttons on a control panel about waist-high which has some dirt and plants covering it.]
- Ponytail: I just gotta access the control panel...
- Ponytail: Yes! It still works!
- Ponytail: OK, full reverse!
- Control panel: Beep beep
- [The field of view widens again, showing North America with a serrated edge along the east coast, from around the state of New Jersey to the province of New Brunswick. A landmass, whose shape indicates that it approximately includes Long Island, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, parts of New Hampshire, Maine, and New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, is moving off to the east in the Atlantic Ocean. The voice of the mob comes from the east coast of North America and the voice of Ponytail comes from the west coast of the landmass.]
- Angry mob: No!
- Ponytail: Hah!
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