... The largest oceanic plateau on Earth, Ontong Java Plateau (OJP), located in the southwestern part of the Pacific plate, approached the subduction zone and resisted tectonic downwelling into Earth's mantle (Cox and Engebretson, 1985a,b;Mahoney and Coffin, 1997;Neal et al., 1997). As a result, the Pacific plate rotated 5 • -15 • clockwise, triggering a swarm of short-lived tectonic, volcanic, and structural events worldwide, such as the separation of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, the formation of topographic divides, and the formation of ecological niches across continents (Figures 1, 2; citations for the events: Vogt, 1972Vogt, , 1979Hsü et al., 1973;Duncan and McDougall, 1974;Ryan and Cita, 1978;Matsubara and Seno, 1980;Leakey, 1981a,b;Hay and Leakey, 1982;Cox and Engebretson, 1985a,b;Sarewitz and Karig, 1986;Bergerat, 1987;Fitton, 1987;Joffe and Garfunkel, 1987;De Ribet and Patriat, 1988;Dewey et al., 1989;Patriat and Parson, 1989;Cloetingh et al., 1990;Pollitz, 1991;Coffin and Eldholm, 1994;Cande et al., 1995;deMenocal, 1995deMenocal, , 2004Rusby and Searle, 1995;Harrison et al., 1997Harrison et al., , 2004McNutt et al., 1997;Tebbens and Cande, 1997;Csontos and Nagymarosy, 1998;Kempler, 1998;Gutscher et al., 1999;Krijgsman et al., 1999;Ebinger et al., 2000;Krijgsman and Langereis, 2000;Wessel and Kroenke, 2000;Allen et al., 2002;Bruguier et al., 2003;Lodolo et al., 2003Lodolo et al., , 2013Bell, 2004;Cande and Stock, 2004;Duggen et al., 2004;Faccenna et al., 2004;Rankenburg et al., 2004;Ben-Avraham et al., 2005;Domínguez-Rodrigo et al., 2005;Eagles et al., 2005;Lu et al., 2005;Tassone et al., 2005;Wang et al., 2007;Croon et al., 2008;Woolley and Kjarsgaard, 2008;White et al., 2009;Cande and Stegman, 2011;Chauvel et al., 2012;Hilgen et al., 2012;Iaffaldano et al., 2012;Baristeas et al., 2013;Colli et al., 2014;Ghiglione et al., 2014Ghiglione et al., , 2016Ben-Avraham and Katsman, 2015;Maslin et al., 2015;Simon et al., 2015;Balázs et al., 2016;Capella et al., 2017;Macchiavelli et al., 2017;Leroux et al., 2018;Vibe et al., 2018;Rozenbaum et al., 2019). The tectonic and environmental disruption was profound and widespread, but shortlived. ...