Category Archives: Paleogeography

Entropy and the Grand Canyon II

Posted on June 25, 2018 by gymnosperm

We left off in the last post having boated 78 miles, about five days on a typical trip, and having encountered the last of the suite of three books that comprise the geological story revealed in the Grand Canyon. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Geological Evolution of the Western United States, Grand Canyon, Paleogeography | Leave a comment

Entropy and the Grand Canyon

Posted on June 20, 2018 by gymnosperm

It has been our good fortune to row 280 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon twice in the last seven months. This is rare for private boaters limited to one trip per calendar year and subject to … Continue reading →

Posted in Geology, Grand Canyon, Paleoclimate, Paleogeography | 1 Comment

Differential Motions of the Continents, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras: The 120mya Inflection and Finale

Posted on March 3, 2018 by gymnosperm

A square kilometer of extruded ocean floor exerts force in all directions. The “squareness” is partly our own construct for convenience of measurement, but also justified by lateral offsets where the linear ruptures we call ridges accommodate the curvature of … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics | Leave a comment

Differential Motions of the Continents, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras V: The 80mya Inflection

Posted on February 10, 2018 by gymnosperm

In the last post on constraints we decided that the east Pacific and Juan de Fuca ridges were useless in constraining the motions of the Americas. We decided that the Atlantic, Greenland, and Lomonosov ridges were acceptable explanations for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics | 1 Comment

Differential Motions of the Continents, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras IV: Constraints

Posted on February 3, 2018 by gymnosperm

We know the position and velocity of stable points on our six cratons. A reasonable question to ask is, “Can we account for this motion?” Above is a map of the ocean floor created in the last 10 million years. … Continue reading →

Posted in Geology, Paleogeography | 2 Comments

Differential Motions of Continents, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras

Posted on January 25, 2018 by gymnosperm

The total volume of ocean floor production becomes increasingly difficult to constrain as we work backwards in time. Ocean floor is increasingly lost to subduction, and efforts to replicate the missing parts become speculation. The continents, by contrast, have grown … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Paleogeography | 2 Comments

The Cretaceous Superchron, Beaufort Isochrons, and the Motion of North America

Posted on December 19, 2017 by gymnosperm

In the last post we explored a very peculiar set of seafloor isochrons in the Beaufort Sea and Arctic ocean. We found that a perpendicular shift in seafloor spreading defined the Cretaceous Normal Superchron, the longest known period in earth … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Cretaceous normal superchron, Geography, Magnetic Reversals, Paleogeography | Leave a comment

Paradise to Ice

Posted on May 27, 2017 by gymnosperm

There are Edens on earth today. They are not found toward the North and South Poles today, but for most of earth history they were.  What causes the planet to transition from paradise to ice? This is a matter of considerable … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Paleoclimate, Paleogeography | 4 Comments

The Pacific Triangle, The Pacific doughboy, and the wave

Posted on July 14, 2014 by gymnosperm

Folks just don’t seem to have their arms around the disarray in the earth sciences these days. Climate science and plate theory are going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up, or more appropriately from the core-mantle boundary. … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geoid, Geology, Large Igneous Provinces, LLSVP, LLSVP's are Doughboys, Oceanography, Pacific Triangle, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Broke Down in Bishop

Posted on July 11, 2014 by gymnosperm

Kyle, my son in law, missed out on circumnavigating Mt. Whitney last October. Unsure if it would work out we latched onto the latest available permit for the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek last Christmas and listed our means … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geology, History of Life, Mount Whitney, Paleogeography, Sierra View | Tagged , | 3 Comments