Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
of crust spread apart and collided with each other, pushing up mountains and continually
resurfacing the planet over geologic time. Here was a single, grand mechanism to explain
not only how continents moved around but how mountains formed, where different rock
types occurred, and why earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountains all line up where plates
split apart, collide, or slide past one another.
In contrast to the long list of fundamentally irreconcilable problems with the concept of
a global flood—such as where the water came from and where it went after the flood, the
order of the fossil record, the predominance of extinct species in the fossil record, and the
presence of soils and burrows developed on sedimentary rocks—plate tectonics provides
remarkably consistent explanations for a wide range of phenomena. It explains why Africa
and South America look like they fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, only separ-
ated by the Atlantic Ocean. It explains the sequences, ages, and assemblages of rocks one
finds throughout the world, as well as the global distribution of topography. Plate tectonics
revolutionized geology, elegantly explaining within a single framework many of the phys-
ical world's outstanding mysteries.
Illustration of how mid-ocean spreading centers connect to subduction zones to define the upper half of deep Earth cir-
culation that drives plate tectonics and rafts continents along as oceanic crust moves laterally
(
based on a sketch by
Véronique Robigou
).
