From the time maps of the globe became available, people wondered about the arrangement of the continents and oceans. Hundreds of years later, valid explanations were constructed. Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics

Leonardo da Vinci and Francis Bacon wondered about the possibility of the American and African continents having broken apart, based on their shapes. This thinking continued up into the early 20th century, to a meteorologist named Alfred Wegener. Early Observations

Wegener revived the early idea of continental drift, contending that all of the present-day continents were connected, side-by-side, as long ago as the Carboniferous (~300 Myr). He called the supercontinental mass Pangaea, Greek for ‘all lands’. Pangaea

Wegener’s summary was based on a number of careful observations: Wegener’s Evidence -- matching rock, fossil, glacier, and structural relations among different parts of different continents

Continental Drift: Fossil Evidence Mesosaurus: purely freshwater reptile Glossopteris: seeds too large to be effectively wind-transported

Continental Drift: Glacial Evidence Large ice masses carve grooves in the rocks over which flow. Such masses tend to flow outward (generally downhill) from a central locality.

Continental Drift: Rock Ages Even before geochronology, the relative framework of rock ages showed strong correlation across the Atlantic, as did mountain ranges of similar age.

Mechanism of Continental Drift? Wegener never lived to see the general acceptance of continental drift, largely because of the lack of a mechanism. Wegener considered the buoyant continents to be ‘plowing’ through the mantle, resulting in mountain belts on continental edges.

Mantle Convection Beginning just after Wegener’s end, Arthur Holmes began to describe mantle heat flow in terms of convection. Deep materials, hotter than their surroundings (and hence buoyant), would tend to flow upward. In approaching the cool surface of the Earth, the material would lose its thermal energy, cool and sink, having lost buoyancy. The motion of mantle material put into action by convection thus becomes a plausible mechanism for moving rigid pieces of the crust over some more actively flowing mantle material.

Mantle Convection Materials that can flow tend to lose thermal energy by the convection process. This explains circulation in a pot of water that is being heated from below in the same way it describes the cooling of the Earth.

From the 1940’s to the 60’s, Harry Hess made many key intellectual contributions to the coming revolution in geologic thought: He also speculated that the continents did not plow through ocean crust, but that the two are linked and move as a unit. -- echo-sounding of sea floor revealed deep sea features like guyots and seamounts, and the topography of mid- ocean ridges -- ridges are areas of high heat flow and volcanic activity -- young age of ocean floor, based on thickness of sediment Harry Hess and Marine Geology

Topography and Age of the Sea Floor thin sediment cover thick sediment cover As ocean crust ages, it cools and is less buoyant. The cool mantle root on this crust helps pull it down into the mantle, resulting in deeper sea floor progressively away from the ridges. thick mantle "ballast" pulls the whole plate down

Harry Hess and Sea Floor Spreading Hess rationalized all of his observations into a system linked by the old Holmes concept of mantle convection. He conjectured that hot material rose at the oceanic ridges, thus explaining the high heat flow and basaltic volcanic activity, and why the ocean floor is bulged up at the ridges. The logical next step is that where continent and ocean meet, at the trenches, ocean crust is being returned to the mantle at the same rate it is being generated at the ridges.

Sea Floor Spreading Hess combined his observations with the earlier ideas of Wegener and the mechanism of Holmes into the concept of sea floor spreading, which lead to plate tectonics. *This hypothesis makes a number of testable predictions.*

Earth’s Magnetic Field The Earth has an invisible magnetic field, which has been critical to the earliest nautical navigation: all free-floating magnets at the Earth’s surface point to magnetic north. Iron-rich minerals crystallizing from molten rock will orient towards magnetic north when they cool below the Curie point, the temperature above which permanent magnetism is impossible (580 o C for magnetite). Thus lavas lock in the record of Earth’s magnetic field when they form. How do we measure the ‘magnetism’ of a rock?

Magnetic Reversals Interestingly, the polarity of the magnetic field shifts every Myr. That means rocks formed over time will record either ‘normal’ magnetic orientation (like today), or ‘reversed’. Since this is a global phenomenon, these changes can be used for global stratigraphic correlation. * Taking magnetic stratigraphy back in time is paleomagnetism. * We are apparently headed into a polarity reversal, to be complete in ~3000 yr.

Geomagnetic reversals MECHANISM How does the field reverse? currents in outer core slowly change direction new computer model demonstrates how currents flow and field reverses field weakens and loses dipolar form while changing direction

Geomagnetic reversals CONSEQUENCES Effects of a future reversal solar wind will hit Earth more strongly increased radiation will cause greater skin cancer disaster is unlikely—Earth has survived countless reversals in the past

Geomagnetic reversals ANOMALIES Gothenburg flip worldwide data shows a reversal around 10,500 B.C. some data from same time shows no reversal coincides with mass extinction and end of ice age

The Key Features of Plate Tectonics (1) The Earth’s crust is constantly being created and destroyed (recycled). (2) Ocean crust, formed at divergent margins, is mafic and dense. (3) As ocean crust ages and cools, its great density relative to the continents results in subduction as plates converge. [As a result, old ocean crust cannot persist, whereas old parts of the buoyant continents can survive for eons.] (4) The other kind of plate margins, transforms, are parallel to the current motion of the plates.

Testing Plate Tectonics Like any theory, plate tectonics has been rigorously tested, and from a startling array of disciplines. This model is consistent with the key tests thus far, including: * sea floor spreading * paleomagnetic ‘paths’ * age structure of the sea floor and continents * locations and focal depths of earthquakes * seismic tomography * hotspot tracks

Mechanisms of Plate Tectonics: Ridge- Push Mantle drag convective flow of mantle 2 1 3

Mechanisms of Plate Tectonics: Plume- Driven 4

Credits Some of the images in this presentation come from: Plummer, McGeary and Carlson, Physical Geology, 8/e; Hamblin and Christiansen, Earth’s Dynamic Systems, 8/e; Press and Siever, Understanding Earth, 3/e; Paul Tomascak (University of Maryland)