EOSC 326 Lecture Notes - Chronostratigraphy, Oceanic Crust, Sea Level Rise
8 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
Module a: geological principles: geological time, age of the earth. One of earliest and most in uential gures in interpretation of geological time. Published a chronology of earth"s history using all dates mentioned in bible to establish a timeline. Established rst day of creation was oct 22 4004bc, which would make earth a little over 6000 years old. Believed earth to have been initially hot molten mass. Heated iron spheres (thought was reasonable model for structure of planet) and calculated time they took to cool. Using this method buffon believed earth was 75,000 years old. Published paper in 1899 in which he estimated earth"s oceans (which he believed to be same age as the planet) to be about 90 million years old. Calculated this by estimating how long it would take for the oceans to reach their current salinity (from an original fresh water state) as salt is added via erosion of minerals in the rocks.
