Continental drift

Wegener s hypothesis was rejected by most American geologists because he could not explain why continents appear to drift (be displaced) on the surface of the Earth. Nevertheless, Wegner s book went through at least four 

Faure and T.M. Mensing, The Transantarctic Mountains Rocks, Ice, Meteorites and Water, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9390-5 9, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 

The hypothesis concerning continental drift was supported by Alex L. du Toil in South Africa who became convinced that the southern continents drifted to their present positions after the supercontinent Pangea broke up during the Mesozoic (du Toit 1937). 

An important piece of evidence in du Toit s reconstruction was the distribution of tillites of Permian age on the southern continents including Antarctica, South America, South Africa, India, and Australia. The geographic distribution of tillite on the southern continents and the ice-flow direction derived from striations on the glaciated rock surfaces seemed to require the improbable conclusion that the source of the Permian 

Continental drift was eventually taken seriously after it became possible in the 1950s to track the past movement of the continents by measuring the declination and the inclination of the magnetic field that was embedded in basalt flows at the time they crystallized (van Andel 1992 Smith 1992). The pattern of magnetic anomalies of the ocean floor that was revealed by Vine and Matthews (1963), combined with the recognition of island arcs by Wilson (1963a, 1965, 1973), supported the concept of sea-floor spreading 

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The outer shell of the earth, consisting of the upper mantle and the crust (Figure I4. lO), is formed of a number of rigid plates. These plates are 20 in number and are shown in Figure 14.1 I. Of these, six or seven are major plates, as can be seen in the map. The edges of these plates define their boundaries and the arrows indicate the direction of their movement. These plates contain the continents, oceans and mountains. They almost float on the partially molten rock and metal of the mantle. The outer shell, known as the lithosphere, is about 70 to 1,50 km thick. It has already moved great distances below the etirth s surface, ever since the earth was formed and is believed to be in slow and continuous motion all the time. The plates slide on the molten mantle and move about lO to 100 mm a year in the direction shown by the arrows. The movement of plates is believed to be the cause of continental drifts, the formation of ocean basins and mountains and also the consequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 

The movement of Earth s crustal plates and the continents they contain - continental drift -has had enormous effects on climate, sea levels, and the distributions of organisms. Mass extinctions of organisms have usually accompanied major drops in sea levels. The collision of all the continents to form the gigantic landmass called Pangaea about 260 million years ago, triggered massive volcanic eruptions. The volcanoes... 

Maier W. (1980). Nasal structures in Old and New World primates. In Evolutionary Biology of the New World Monkeys and Continental Drift (Ciochon A.I. and Chiarelli A.B., eds.). Karger, Basel, pp. 219-241. 

Molten Rock (a) The magma is a constant flow carrying sediments downwards only for them to emerge in transformed states (b) Upwelling of minerals in the black smokers (also contributes to temperature) (c) Continental drift causes changes in environment... 

As a final application of the seasonal climate simulation, I consider the influence of continental drift. The input file CLIMINP.PRN is modified to contain the land distribution for the Miocene, 15 million years ago, as tabulated by Parrish (1985). The program, DAV14, is otherwise unmodified. 

Heezen B.C. and Tharp M. (1965) Tectonic fabric of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and continental drift. Phil. Trans. Roy. Co. London, Series A 258, 90-106. 

The sun-centered solar system Warm-bloodedness in dinosaurs The germ-theory of disease Continental drift... 

Meinesz, Vening Continental Drift (Ed. S. K. Runcorn). New York Academic Press 1962. 

This same approach could be used both to validate further the presently entrenched continental drift theory and predict from coal and shale analysis of an area of one continent the type of organic deposits which may be present on another fitted but as yet unexplored continent (8). 

SeatItKir spreading, continental drift and plate tectonics have pemicaied getK hcniisiry. W e linallv understand the fate of settimenis and oceanic crust in subduclion /ones, their hurial and Iheir... 

The concept of global tectonics (Dietz, 1961 Hess, 1962 Morgan, 1968 Le Pichon et al., 1973) combined the earlier proposals of continental drift and seafloor spreading into a unified theory of terrestrial dynamics. It introduced the notion of continual generation and destruction of oceanic crust and implied similar consequences for other tectonic realms. 

Walker L. J., Wilkinson B. H., and Ivany L. C. (2002) Continental drift and Phanerozoic carbonate accumulation in shallow-shelf and deep-marine settings. J. Geol 110, 75-87. 

Constellation Constructions Contaminated soil Contamination Continent Continental drift Continental margin Continental shelf Continuity Contour plowing Contraception Convection... 

Davies, P. A. The Mechanisms of Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics. New York Academic Press, 1997. 

Burke, K. Dewey, J. F. 1973. An outline of Precambrian plate development. In Tarling, D. H. Runcorn, S. K. (eds) Implications of Continental Drift to the Earth Sciences, Vol. 2. Academic Press, New York, 1035-1045. 

Tardy, Y. Kobilsek, B. Paquet, H. (1991) Mineralogical composition and geographical distribution of African and Brazilian periatlantic laterites. The influence of continental drift and tropical paleoclimates during the past 150 million years and implications for India and Australia. Journal of African Earth Sciences 12, 283-295. 

Blake, T.S., Buick, R., Brown, S.J.A., and Barley, M.E., 2004. Geochronology of a late Archaean flood basalt province in the Pilbara Craton, Australia constraints on basin evolution, volcanic and sedimentary accumulation, and continental drift rates. Precambrian Res., 133, 143-73. 

Otto-Bliesner B.L. (1995) Continental drift, runoff and weathering feedbacks implications from climate model ex-periments.J. Geophys. Res. 100, 11537-48. 

The jigsaw-like fit between Africa and South America has been obvious to everyone who has looked at a world map since sufficiently accurate maps became available. Francis Bacon commented on it in 1620, as did many others long before 1912, when Alfred Wegener proposed his theory of continental drift to explain it. Nonetheless, until the 1960s, the standard view of geophysicists was that the fit was pure coincidence, and they heaped on Wegener s ideas the kind of scorn that is today reserved by virologists for the notion that human immunodeficiency virus may not be responsible for the collection of diseases known as AIDS. 

There are some similarities (but also some important differences) between the history of continental drift and that of the causes of cancer. It has been known for more than a century that there is a close association between cancer and a chromosomal abnormahty known as aneuploidy, but most experts today consider this little more than a coincidence, or that the chromosomal abnormality is more of a consequence than a cause of the cancer. 

Beno Gutenberg. Physics of the Earth s Interior. 1959 Joseph W. Chamberlain. Physics of the Aurora and Airglow. 1961 S. K. Runcorn (ed.). Continental Drift. 1962 C. E. Junge. Air Chemistry and Radioactivity. 1963... 

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