ANT 301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Continental Drift, Cenozoic, Thermoluminescence
Document Summary
In the 1950"s, people didn"t know about continental drift (pangea); not until the 1960"s. The earth has undergone extreme climate changes (over the past 65 million years) **over the coast of the cenozoic, it was generally warmer and became cooler over time. This is why we have warm, tropical forests in north america. As we get closer to the present day, there is a lot more climatic variability. K/ar is the rate of decay (potassium-argon dating) Tied to the discovery of continental drift and plate tectonics (makes compasses work) The north pole isn"t always the north pole (they ip through time) Was discovered by looking at the polarity on the sea oor (mostly occur deep in ocean basins) O16 evaporates more easily than o18. (it is lighter) The amount of o16 in the ocean varies depending on how cold it is; also varies on whether or not it is trapped in the shells of microorganisms in the ocean.
