Notes:

Plate tectonic Diagram:

Sir Francis Bacon –(1610)

-​ Bacon was a naturalist and philosopher

-​ Proponent of inductive reasoning using specific observations to make generalizations as
opposed to deductive reasoning using rules to explain observations

-​ A divinist → attributed most observations to Noah’s Flood: ex of catastrophism

First Scientific Proposal: Antonio Snider_pellegrini, 1858

Observation: same fossils in North America and Europe

Late 19th Century

‘Permanetism’ - Continents are fixed in position connect by land bridges which sink to create
oceans

Filling a Knowledge gap: Geophysics and the Earth’s Interior –Early 20th Century

●​ With the development of the science of seismology, the interior structure of the earth,
containing a crust, mantle, and core was identified

Andrija Mohorovicic’ 1909 - Boundary between the crust and mantle = Mohorovicic discontinuity

Mobilism : mountains made by shifting continents (contrast to permanentism)

Frank Bursley Taylor (1910): ‘Earth’s Plan’ where continents move as ‘sheets’ that are moved by
centripetal or tidal forces

Raised beaches, when mapped over long distances across the Great Lakes tilt, show that the
land is rebounding unevenly(because of the softness of the upper mantle)

Alfred Wegener (1915):

-​ Die Entstehung der Kontinente and Ozeane(“The Origin of Continents and Oceans”)
 ●​ Made models, plotted bands of fossils and geology from the Americas to Africa
●​ Suffered from professional, nationalistic, and linguistic biases

Response to ‘Continental Drift’ was extremely negative

Opposed by geophysicists like “Sir Harold Jeffreys “ at cambridge(1891-1989)

●​ Studied earthquakes and how they can be used to map earth’s structure
●​ The Earth’s interior was considered too stiff to allow continental drift

Magma = molten fluid rock. A mix of fluid and crystals

Paleoaltitude – measure of the inclination of magnetite

Late 1950’s

●​ Magnetic grains in old rocks don’t point north!

●​ APPARENT POLAR WANDER CURVES
●​ Ted Irving, Trond Torsvik & Others

1960’s– Computers in universities

●​ Edward Bular, 1965:

○​ Computer reconstruction confirmed the ‘fit’ of modern day continents either side
of the Atlantic ocean

●​ So by the mid 1950’s, we know that many observations(paleoclimate data,

paleomagnetic data, geographic fits) made more sense with continental drift, but could
not explain HOW it happened
○​ New Data Source: Mapping the Ocean Floor

Data Revolution

●​ 1939-1945
○​ The Second World War followed by the Cold War from 1948 resulted in
anti-submarine warfare and the development of new sonar devices to find them
and map the ocean floor
●​ 1950’s - 1960’s
○​ The Ocean floor gets mapped(geophysics)
 ○​ THE OCEAN FLOOR REVEALED: MID-OCEAN RIDGES, RIFT VALLEYS,
FRACTURES AND TRENCHES→ Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen: 1957

Harold Hess — Sea Floor Spreading

●​ Sea floor created at ridges and recycled into mantle at trenches. = two types of
boundaries
●​ Could explain a mechanism to move continents

Earth’s Magnetic Field reverses polarity every so often

●​ We can see and date magnetic reversals on land where there are many successively
stacked lava flows
●​ Magnetic reversals occur on average every 500,000 years(with variation)
●​ Takes about 10,000 years or less for a reversal to occur

Magnetometers detect submarines, and also the magnetic signature of rocks

Magnetic Stripes(1965)

The Vine-Matthews-Morely hypothesis

​ Magnetometer surveys of ocean floor identified patterns of anomalies symmetrically on
each side of MORs

At any given time, new seafloor records the magnetic polarity OF THAT TIME

Hypothesis: Seafloor spreading is a result of old seafloor being pushed away and off of the ridge
by new seafloor

Subduction Zones:

Where ocean plate is destroyed

Recognized by Benioff Zones: where earthquakes dip into the interior

Hot Spot tracks

Jack Tuzo Wilson (Professor of Geophysics)
●​ Hot spots prove plate movements
●​ A third type of plate boundary where new plate is neither created nor destroyed
○​ San Andreas Fault
■​ Fractures cutting across ridges are transform faults
Transform Faults: allow spreading either side of sinuous mid-ocean ridges by dividing ridge into
segments

Wilson,1968: THE UNITED PLATES OF PLANET EARTH​

●​ About 24 major plates
●​ No more “continental drift” now plate tectonics
●​ Plates are not flat
●​ MORs, Trenches etc. also move

THE NORTH AMERICAN PLATE

Ground Truthing plate tectonics by drilling the ocean floor

●​ The breakup of Pangea can also be thought of as the OPENING of new oceans between
continents
○​ However, when continents move they inevitably end up destroying older oceans
by subduction

THE WILSON CYCLE

●​ Approx 500 Million years in duration from beginning to end
●​ Last supercontinent was Pangea 250 million years ago(Ma: mega annum)
●​ “Oceans” are growing and dying all the time
○​ Embryonic and juvenile oceans like the Red Sea
○​ Mature oceans like the Atlantic
○​ Dying oceans like the Pacific
○​ Dead Oceans like the Tethys
Module 1: Plate Tectonic Diagram

1598: The First Atlas of the Earth

●​ Flemish Cartographer Abraham Ortelius(1527-1598)

●​ Published first ‘modern’ atlas of the world and speculate that the continents of South
America and Africa were once joined based on close fit between them

1683: First European sees Niagara Gorge

●​ Niagara Falls first seen by European in 1678(Roman Catholic priest and missionary
Louis Hennepin)
●​ He painted the falls and brought word of discover to Europe
●​ The Gorge proved in 18th and 19th century to be a key line of evidence in estimations of
the age of the Earth, particularly after it was demonstrated by Charles Lyell in 1842 that
the 10-km long gorge was formed by the gradual recession of Niagara Falls from the
Niagara Escarpment.
●​ Hennepin documentation of the area was extremely important to geologists who
estimated that the rate of recession about 1m per year, and it must have take many
thousands of years for falls to recede their present position
●​ Figures ranged from 5000-54000 years, generally exceeding the age of Earth as
estimated from biblical sources

1795: The Present is the Key to the Past

●​ The ‘father of geology,’ James Hutton published his “Theory of the Earth” which
revolutionized views of the nature of the geologic record. In particular, Hutton understood
the enormity of geologic time He viewed the Earth as having “no vestige of a beginning,
no prospect of an edn” because rocks were constantly being transformed and recycled
through the rock cycle.
●​ Hutton’s ideas were build upon by generations of geologists including Charles Lyell who
laid out the philosophy of ‘uniformitarianism’ in his textbook “Principles of Geology”
●​ Uniformitarianism is based around the principle that the same natural laws and
processes that operated now have always operated, and thus the present is the key to
the past

1846: A Major Shake-up

●​ The ‘father of seismology’, Robert Mallet was the first to propose that earthquakes are
generated by crustal movements(faulting), and that energy from earthquakes is
transmitted from a centre point through the ground in waves. His experiments simulated
an earthquake by detonating explosives on a beach and recording the transmission of
energy through the sand. Later, the Great Neopolitan Quake of 1857 provided an
 opportunity to investigate the damaging effects of seismic waves in a natural
environment.
●​ “Seismic” waves are waves of energy produced through earthquakes and “epicentre” to
describe the centre point above an earthquake

1858: New World Paleontology

●​ French geographer Antonio Snider Pelligrini noted striking similarities in the fossil
assemblages of plants in Europe and America and deduced that because plants are
unable to disperse across wide oceans that the continents were once connected
●​ He actually produced a map fitting the Americas together with Europe and Africa into a
single continent.

1862: Re-calculating the Age of the Earth

●​ Lord Kelvin is probably most famous for his expertise in the study of thermodynamics
and the eponymous Kelvin scale of temperature
●​ However, Kelvin also infamously underestimated the age of Earth to be 100 million years
old
●​ Kelvin modelled the Earth as a ball of molten magma and based his calculations on the
rate at which such a ball would cool to have the current geothermal gradient
●​ At the time, little was known of the structure of the interior of the earth, nor of the effects
of radioactivity in warming the Earth, thus rendering Kelvin’s estimate to be far too young
●​ However, his age determination was far older than previous determinations which led to
a new understanding of the rate of geologic processes and also substantiated the
growing theory of evolution as proposed by Charles Darwin

1872: The HMS Challenger Expedition

●​ While planning the route for a transatlantic telegraph cable, scientists aboard the HMS
Challenger discover a broad rise on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean which was previously
thought to be shaped like a large, featureless, bowl.
●​ This rise was later named the Mid Atlantic Ridge, which consists of a 16,000 km long
chain of volcanoes that come above sea level at iceland.
●​ The Challenger Expedition lasted 1000 days and ultimately traversed 68,000 nautical
miles
●​ The deepest point on the seafloor at 10,916 km is named the Challenger Deep in honour
of the great scientific importance of this expedition

1895: Mapping the Ocean Floor

 ●​ One of most significant outcomes of the Challenged Expeditions was publication of
“Bathymetrical Chart of the Oceans Showing the DeepsaE nearly twenty years later by
Sir John Murray of obourg, Ontario who was a research assistant during the four-year
voyage.
●​ The depth of the seafloor was determined through a technique called ‘sounding’
○​ A heavy rope with a weight was lowered to the bottom
●​ Broad ‘plateaus’ were identified separating ‘deeps’ which were areas of the seafloor with
depths greater than 3000 fathoms(5,486m) The mere fact that the seafloor was not a
uniform bowl-shape was surprising at the time. The origin of these enormous features
was not realized for many years, but ultimately played a critical role in understanding
plate tectonics

1905: Nuclear Decay

●​ The discovery of radioactive isotopes by the likes of Antoine Henri Becquerel & Pierre
and Marie Curie at end of 19th century had important implications for Earth Science
●​ Experiments by physicist Ernest Rutheford in 1905 elucidated the structure of an atom
as having a nucleus from which small particles could spontaneously be released at a
very regular rate.
●​ This process, called “nuclear decay”
○​ Generates heat which mean simple models of Earth’s age calculated from
cooling rates needed to account for this new source of heating

●​ Rutherford suggested rate of radioactive decay could be quantified by concept of a

half-life
○​ The time it takes for half of an amount of radioactive material to decay
○​ Also proposed that this property might be of use in dating rocks

1906: Fossil Magnetism

●​ French geographer Jean Brunhes discovered that small grains of the mineral magnetite
in volcanic rocks are fossilized compasses that lock in the orientation of magnetic field
when they cool
●​ First to note that some magnetite grains were oriented in the complete opposite direction
indicating the magnetic north pole was once at south pole
●​ Magnetic reversals happen every 200,000 to 1 million years

1906: Exploration of Earth’s Interior

 ●​ Seismology stations with high-precision seismographs became increasingly common
during early decade of the 20th century
○​ Leading to a revolution in our understanding of the interior structure of the Earth
●​ For the first time, epicenters of Earthquakes occurring around the world could be located
with ease
●​ Seismology stations measure the energy intensity of seismic waves that travel along the
surface of the Earth(surface waves),
○​ As well as those that travel through the centre of the Earth(body waves)
●​ Different types of body waves travel at different velocities depending on the state(solild
or light) and density of the medium they are moving through
●​ First internal structure identified was liquid outer core of the Earth
●​ The last major structures was solid inner core hidden with liquid outer core

1910: Crustal Motion and Mountains

●​ In a study of the Tertiary mountain belts surround by the Pacific Ocean and across
southern Asia
●​ Frank Taylor, proposes that mountain growth is caused by the lateral migration of entire
continents
●​ Taylor’s hypothesis was largely rejected by the scientific community because it lacked an
adequate explanation of how continents were able to move through oceanic crust
●​ Taylor incorrectly attributed great tidal forces as main cause of continental movement
●​ Taylor’s most significant finding may have been the association between submarine
trenches and mountain belts around the Pacific Ocean, now recognized as subduction
zones

1911: Radiometric Dating

●​ Arthur Holmes published first real geochronology paper in 1911 , “The Association of
Lead with Uranium in Rock-Minerals and it’s application to the Measurement of Geologic
Time”
●​ He performed uranium-lead radiometric dating(widely used today)
●​ Many different isotope parings can be used to date rocks of many different ages and
compositions, including Uranium-235 to Lead-207(700 million years half life),
potassium-40 to argon-40(1.3 billion year half life), and carbon-14 to nitrogen-14(5730
year half life)

1912: Alfred Wegener Proposed “Continental Drift”

●​ Alfred Wegener- a German meteorologist and geophysicist published
○​ “The Origins of Continents and Oceans”
○​ Where he proposed that all continents were once clustered into a ‘subcontinent’
called Pangea(“all the lands”) in a ‘superocean’ called Panthalassa(“all the
 waters”) bud had separated by the slow ‘drifting’ of continental crust through
oceanic crust.

●​ A great many lines of evidence were compiled to support his argument,

●​ Wegener failed to explained the physical mechanism through which accomplished
●​ Wegener envisioned blocks of continent crust flowing through oceanic crust which was
rejected by the scientific community as physically impossible.
●​ Take many years for others to provide an explanation for Wegener's”Continental Drift”
through development of Plate Tectonic Theory

1928: The Mantle Moves

●​ British Geologist Arthur Holmes proposed that Wegener’s observations of continental

drift could be explained by giant convection currents in the mantle where hot, low density
mantle rock rises and cold high density mantle rock sinks.
●​ As an undergrad—> he had been heavily involved with developing radiometric dating
techniques to estimate the age of the Earth.
●​ He was in an ideal spot to update the age of the Earth from estimates made earlier by
Lord Kelvin based on the rate of heat loss from Earth’s interior.
●​ Presence of convection currents in mantle meant that assumption about rate of cooling
were inaccurate, while radioactive decay elements was creating new heat
●​ Holmes reevaluated the age of Earth to 1.6 billion year, short about 3 billion year of
figure accepted today

1939: World War II

●​ Onset of WWII triggers the extensive use of sonar and echo sounders to map the
seafloor.
●​ Sonar is short for “Sound Navigation and Ranging” and uses the time it takes for an
acoustic signal sent from a transducer to hit the seafloor and return to determining the
depth of water.
●​ This new tech was a boon to geologists wanting to know more about ocean
floor(including Harold Hess)
○​ Who discovered large-flat topped volcanic mountains → guyots or seamounts
while surviving the ocean floor
●​ These volcanic mountains form as islands that are planned off by erosion and slowly
subside over time

1955 : Discovery of Benioff Zones

●​ By developing a tool to measure the depth of earthquake foci, Hugo Benioff discovered
that many of the circum-Pacific Earthquakes occur along a discrete dipping plane that
 reach depths of several hundred kilometres. These ‘Benioff Zones’ record seismicity
from a downgoing slab of lithosphere and are located at what later became known as
‘subduction zones’
●​ This motion produces earthquakes up to depths of about 700 km
●​ Subduction zones are where tectonic plates get destroyed

1958: Cold War Tensions

●​ During the 1950’s and 1960’s, establishing a global network of properly calibrated
seismic stations became a priority due to the increasing need to detect nuclear
explosions.
●​ USA’s World-Wide Standardized Seismograph Network(WWSSN) distributed seismology
equipment to universities and governmental agencies worldwide.
●​ Canada independently developed seismic monitoring networks
●​ A distinct pattern of earthquake occurrence emerged where earthquakes were primarily
distributed in linear paths following mid ocean ridges, deep sea trenches, or continental
mountain belts.
○​ Pattern known to follow tectonic plate boundaries

1959: Ocean Floor Physiography

●​ Detailed graph of seafloor after World War II

●​ Echo sounding become commonplace and all that was needed to synthesize, interpret,
and present data
○​ Done by Maurice Ewing, Marie Tharp, Bruce Heezen

●​ Maps revealed the poorly understood features of the seafloor that were ultimately
instrumental in understanding plate tectonic theory
○​ Including structure of Mid Atlantic Ridge & presence of fracture zones across
seafloor

1961: Sea floor Spreading

●​ Two Geologists: Robert S Dietz & Harold Hess

○​ Proposed ‘sea floor spreading’ as a fundamental mechanism to explain
continental drift
●​ Sea floor spreading → Magma is erupted onto the seafloor at a mid ocean ridge as two
plates move in opposite directions
●​ The concentrations of earthquakes along mid ocean ridge axes noted years before
supporting this hypothesis → but lacked evidence

1963: Hotspot Tracks Explained

 ●​ Tuzo Wilson, Canadian geophysicist → proposed that tectonic plates moved over fixed
‘hotspots’ in the mantle
●​ Concept explained why volcanoes occur away from plate boundaries→ previously seen
as a contradiction to plate tectonic theory
○​ Also how the chains of flat topped mountains observed on the seafloor by Harold
Hess were formed

●​ These chains of guyots or seamounts record direction and velocity of moving tectonic
plates

1965: Sea Floor Stripping

●​ Magnetic polarity of basalts that make up the seafloor was mapped using a
magnetometer, revealing distinct stripes parallel with mid-oceanic ridges.
●​ Stripes confirmed Hess’s hypothesis of sea floor spreading
○​ As magma erupts at mid ocean ridge → small magnetic particles crystallize in
direction of Earth’s magnetic field

●​ Reversals in polarity of Earth’s magnetic field occur periodically

○​ Resulting in alternating stripes of positive and negative polarity on seafloor away
from mid oceanic ridge
●​ Observation confirmed model of seafloor spreading because it showed the age of
seafloor increases away from mid-oceanic ridges
○​ So, there must be where new oceanic crust formed

●​ Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis
○​ In 1963, Lawrence Morley→ Canadian geophysicist hypothesized on the origin of
magnetic stripes turned down for publication too speculative
■​ Co-credited late by Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews

1965: Computational Power

●​ Edward Bullar evaluated geometric fit between SA and Africa statistically

○​ Clarified the controversy and also accounted for spreading on a spherical globe

1965: A New Type of Plate Boundary

●​ Tuzo Wilson describes a third type of plate boundary called transform margins.
●​ Margins connect offset ridges and subduction zones and allow plates to slip past each
other w/o removal or addition of any new crustal material
○​ Ex: San Andreas Fault between NA and Pacific plates
1965: National Geodetic Satellite Program

●​ Space race incentivized to improve accuracy of geodetic measurements on Earth

●​ Satellite Laser Ranging(SLR) → travel time of a laser originating from a stationary
telescope and reflecting off of a geodetic satellite is measure to a very high precision
●​ About 40 geodetic stations using SLR still operates b/c despite advancements in
universally familiar GPS network
○​ The SLR network provided higher accuracy measurements

1966: The Wilson Cycle

●​ Tuzo wilson described creation and separation of the supercontinent Pangea in a paper
in Nature” Did the Atlantic close and then re-open?”
●​ This was culmination of the many individual pieces of the plate tectonic puzzle
●​ Wilson described it, tectonic plates were rigid and could only bend at their margins
●​ Oceanic plates form when continental crust is pulled apart
●​ Oceanic crust is generated at mid ocean ridges via sea floor spreading, and destroyed
subduction zones
●​ If all the oceanic crust between two continents is destroyed, those continents collide to
form mountain ranges
●​ Basis for the Wilson cycle describes the growth and decay of supercontinents

1976: Launch of LAGEOS​

●​ LAGEOS → “Laser Geodynamic Satellite”

○​ A series of 2 satellites that were launched to provide accurate geodetic
measurements
●​ Satellite laser ranging → lasers emitted form land-based stations
●​ Satellites have stable orbits at 6000 km above Earth’s place and are not predicted to
re-enter Earth’s atmosphere for another 8.4 million years

●​ Purpose of LAGEOS → to enable very accurate measurement of Earth’s crust to detect

the shape of the geoid and speed and direction of crustal movements

●​ LAGEOS improved accuracy of geodetic measurements from about 1 meter to about 1

cm

●​ A plaque designed by Carl Sagan and illustrating breakup of Pangea and projected
position of the continents upon LAGEOS’s return to Earth is embedded within

1978: The Global Positioning System

●​ US Department of Defense launches Global positioning system(GPS)
○​ Users location is determined via detection of a timecode transmitted form space
○​ Initially only for military use and only 10 satellites
○​ Open up for civilian use in 1993 w/ 31 satellites now in service

●​ Most commercial GPS receivers achieve an accuracy of several meters, but high-end
receivers taking long-term measurements can have millimeter-scale accuracy

1985: Direct Observations

●​ Scientists at NASA use satellite laser ranging(SLR) to directly observe tectonic plate
motions and find they agree with predicted estimates
●​ The science of geodesy → using a multitude on the Earth’s surface and track them as
they move
●​ SLR largely been superseded by GPS as method for directly measuring plate motion