Author: John J. W. Rogers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2004-09-16
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 0195347331
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →To this day, there is a great amount of controversy about where, when and how the so-called supercontinents--Pangea, Godwana, Rodinia, and Columbia--were made and broken. Continents and Supercontinents frames that controversy by giving all the necessary background on how continental crust is formed, modified, and destroyed, and what forces move plates. It also discusses how these processes affect the composition of seawater, climate, and the evolution of life. Rogers and Santosh begin with a survey of plate tectonics, and go on to describe the composition, production, and destruction of continental and oceanic crust, and show that cratons or assemblies of cratons became the first true continents, approximately one billion years after the earliest continental crust evolved. The middle part of the book concentrates on supercontinents, beginning with a discussion of types of orogenic belts, distinguishing those that formed by closure of an ocean basin within the belt and those that formed by intracontinental deformation caused by stresses generated elsewhere. This information permits discrimination between models of supercontinent formation by accretion of numerous small terranes and by reorganization of large old continental blocks. This background leads to a description of the assembly and fragmentation of supercontinents throughout earth history. The record is most difficult to interpret for the oldest supercontinent, Columbia, and also controversial for Rodinia, the next youngest supercontinent. The configurations and pattern of breakup of Gondwana and Pangea are well known, but some aspects of their assembly are unclear. The book also briefly describes the histories of continents after the breakup of Pangea, and discusses how changes in the composition of seawater, climate, and life may have been affected by the sizes and locations of continents and supercontinents.
Author: United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
Publisher: Wentworth Press
Published: 2016-08-26
Total Pages: 28
ISBN-13: 9781362857501
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Author: Lester Charles King
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 1983
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Chichester [West Sussex] ; New York : Wiley, c1983.
Author: Walter Sullivan
Publisher: American Institute of Physics
Published: 1991-07-25
Total Pages: 464
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Science writer Sullivan (he was science editor of The New York Times for 23 years) updates his 1974 (McGraw-Hill) survey for the student or serious lay reader to incorporate developments that have reinforced or elaborated the theory presented in the original edition. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.