文档介绍：Plate Tectonics
By . Gahagan
Rough draft
October 5, 2001
Historical Aspects(From Cox, 1973)
mapping of seafloor topography
(presence of guyots, mid-ocean ridges, etc.)
Key events
Seafloor topography (Smith and Sandwell 1997)
Historical Aspects(From Cox, 1973)
mapping of seafloor topography
measuring the seafloor’s ic field
(‘ic stripes’)
Key events
ic ‘stripes’ along the Reykjanes Ridge. From Vine 1966
ridge
Historical Aspects(From Cox, 1973)
mapping of seafloor topography
measuring the seafloor’s ic field
timing the north-south flips of earth’s ic field
(ism)
Key events
Historical Aspects(From Cox, 1973)
mapping of seafloor topography
measuring the seafloor’s ic field
timing the north-south flips of earth’s ic field
accurate location of earthquakes
(indicate present-day plate boundaries)
Key events
Earthquake epicenters (Engdahl et al. 1998) and Holocene volcanoes (Smithsonian Global Volcanism Project)
Key Papers
Wegener (1912) – Continental drift: continents rafting through the upper mantle.
 
Menard (1952), Dietz (1952) – fracture zones
 
Irving (1956), Runcorn (1956) – used ic data to show polar wandering and motion between plates.
 
Ewing and Heezen (1956) – presence of a rift valley at crest of most mid-ocean ridges.
 
Dietz (1961) – coined the term “sea-floor spreading”
 
Hess (1962) – Plate tectonics: convecting mantle passively carries the continents.
 
Vine and Matthews (1963) – ic stripes of the ocean sea floor are created by the ization of oceanic crust as it is formed at the mid-ocean ridges. The older crust moves away from the ridge as new crust forms.