Earth Sciences 1023A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Continental Drift, Jigsaw Puzzle, Continental Crust
3 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Temperature distribution in continental crust and lithosphere is governed mainly by conductive heat loss to the surface. Convection plays the dominant role in the transport of heat from the mantle. Convectively over turns the cool mass, and drives plate motions. Alfred wegener (father of continental drift theory - 1915) Wegener could not suggest a viable mechanism to move plates. But, by 1950s it enjoyed a revival, as a result of the collection of new data* sets with unexpected features. Like a bar magnetic in its shape, bar magnetic is static and fixed, but the earth"s magnetic field is always moving. >rocks record past magnetic field (those that can lock the magnetism into their minerals) The second way sedimentary rocks can also acquire magnetization by cold magnetic particle orientation during deposition. The position of earth"s magnetic north pole is not fixed! (nor is s-pole)
