EARTH 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: West Antarctica, Radiometric Dating, Hadean
Document Summary
A fracture in a rock along which one side has moved relative to the other side. The problem with geology is that the experiment has already been run. 3 key principles: original horizontality o. Fossil organisms succeeded each other through time in a definite and recognizable pattern. 4600 ma - 4000 ma hadean (earth cools) 4000 ma - 2500 ma archean (prokaryotic cells) 2500 ma - 542 ma proterozoic (multicellular organisms) Several small blocks or microplates compromise west antarctica. East antarctica is comprised of one plate. Antarctic continent is 99% covered by ice. Completely covered by over 600 meters of ice and snow. Starting point for east antarctica ice sheet. Recall, earth is 4. 6 billion years old. Oldest rocks in antarctica are ~4 billion years old: napier orogeny. East antarctica and laurentia (north america) were joined ~1 billion - 750 million years ago. Antarctica joined with other southern hemisphere continents.
