Category Archives: Plate Tectonics

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

Aftershocks Implicate Unusual Fault System in American Canyon Quake

Posted on August 25, 2014 by gymnosperm

California can be thought of as a ice flow where multiple independent blocks with different inherent buoyancies are at times pressed together, pulled apart, and slid past each other. The M 6.1 American Canyon quake did not take place on … Continue reading →

Posted in American Canyon Earthquake, Geography, Geology, Plate Tectonics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

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

Russians R Us

Posted on July 5, 2014 by gymnosperm

So perhaps you are red headed and fancy yourself Celtic. Well, I’ve got news for you. There may have been a few red genes somewhere but the Celtic genome and culture were centered in France and characterized by brown hair … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Geography, History, Plate Tectonics, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Huston, We have a Few More Problems

Posted on April 7, 2014 by gymnosperm

Humans are not naturally inclined to science. We yearn for certainty, the sort of certainty mathematical equations could provide if only we could be certain of the factors. We cannot. We don’t really yearn for mathematics, it is just another … Continue reading →

Posted in Asthenia, Geology, Large Igneous Provinces, Magnetic Reversals, Moho, Oceanography, Plate Tectonics, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Rocks, The Origional Hard Data

Posted on March 3, 2014 by gymnosperm

You simply can’t deny rock. Kick it and it throbs your toe. They lie around us, largely ignored, Farmers curse them and pile them in walls, yet a few dedicated folks with pointed hammers have picked them to yield an … Continue reading →

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Geography, Geological Evolution of the Western United States, Geology, hard data, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Around the World in Eighty Million Years

Posted on February 19, 2014 by gymnosperm

We have been doing a puzzle like you might have been given in first grade where there is some large animal with lines missing and your job is to connect the dots and fill it in. The joy is still … Continue reading →

Posted in Cretaceous normal superchron, Geography, Geology, Magnetic Reversals, Pacific Triangle, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Pacific Triangle Revisited, The Impact, The Wave

Posted on February 2, 2014 by gymnosperm

We have explored the Pacific Triangle and the Ring around Antarctica in prior posts. It just seems so outrageous that three spreading ridges would suddenly emerge from a single point in the Panthalassic Ocean 170 million years ago and begin migrating away in … Continue reading →

Posted in Asteroid Impacts, Geography, Geology, Pacific Triangle, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Paving It Won’t Save It (The Planet, That is)

Posted on December 26, 2013 by gymnosperm

The oceans are the energy bank for the planet. They receive energy to great depth from the sun. Continents cool the planet. Daedalus suggested in jest that if we increased the area of the continents 5%, we could reverse the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Geography, Geology, Global Warming, Plate Tectonics, Serpentine | Tagged , , | Leave a comment