Ice sheet
An ice sheet known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2. The only current ice sheets are in Greenland. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers. Masses of ice covering less than 50,000 km2 are termed an ice cap. An ice cap will feed a series of glaciers around its periphery. Although the surface is cold, the base of an ice sheet is warmer due to geothermal heat. In places, melting occurs and the melt-water lubricates the ice sheet so that it flows more rapidly; this process produces fast-flowing channels in the ice sheet — these are ice streams. The present-day polar ice sheets are young in geological terms; the Antarctic Ice Sheet first formed as a small ice cap in the early Oligocene, but retreating and advancing many times until the Pliocene, when it came to occupy all of Antarctica. The Greenland ice sheet did not develop at all until the late Pliocene, but developed rapidly with the first continental glaciation.
This had the unusual effect of allowing fossils of plants that once grew on present-day Greenland to be much better preserved than with the forming Antarctic ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth, it covers an area of 14 million km2 and contains 30 million km3 of ice. Around 90% of the Earth's ice mass is in Antarctica, which, if melted, would cause sea levels to rise by 58 meters; the continent-wide average surface temperature trend of Antarctica is positive and significant at >0.05 °C/decade since 1957. The Antarctic ice sheet is divided by the Transantarctic Mountains into two unequal sections called the East Antarctic ice sheet and the smaller West Antarctic Ice Sheet; the EAIS rests on a major land mass but the bed of the WAIS is, in places, more than 2,500 metres below sea level. It would be seabed; the WAIS is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice shelves. The WAIS is bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the Ronne Ice Shelf, outlet glaciers that drain into the Amundsen Sea.
The Greenland ice sheet occupies about 82% of the surface of Greenland, if melted would cause sea levels to rise by 7.2 metres. Estimated changes in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet suggest it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres per year; these measurements came from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite, launched in 2002, as reported by BBC News in August 2006. Ice movement is dominated by the motion of glaciers, whose activity is determined by a number of processes, their motion is the result of cyclic surges interspersed with longer periods of inactivity, on both hourly and centennial time scales. The Greenland, the Antarctic, ice sheets have been losing mass because losses by ablation including outlet glaciers exceed accumulation of snowfall. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, loss of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheet mass contributed about 0.21 ± 0.35 and 0.21 ± 0.07 mm/year to sea level rise between 1993 and 2003. The IPCC projects that ice mass loss from melting of the Greenland ice sheet will continue to outpace accumulation of snowfall.
Accumulation of snowfall on the Antarctic ice sheet is projected to outpace losses from melting. However, in the words of the IPCC, "Dynamical processes related to ice flow not included in current models but suggested by recent observations could increase the vulnerability of the ice sheets to warming, increasing future sea level rise. Understanding of these processes is limited and there is no consensus on their magnitude." More research work is therefore required to improve the reliability of predictions of ice-sheet response on global warming. In 2018, scientists discovered channels between the East and West Antarctic ice sheets that may allow melted ice to flow more to the sea; the effects on ice sheets due to increasing temperature may accelerate, but as documented by the IPCC the effects are not projected and in the case of the Antarctic, may trigger an accumulation of additional ice mass. If an ice sheet were ablated down to bare ground, less light from the sun would be reflected back into space and more would be absorbed by the land.
The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 84% of the island and the Antarctic Ice Sheet covers 98% of the continent. Due to the significant thickness of these ice sheets, global warming analysis focuses on the loss of ice mass from the ice sheets increasing sea level rise, not on a reduction in the surface area of the ice sheets. Müller, Jonas. Ice Sheets: Dynamics and Environmental Concerns. Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science. ISBN 978-1-61942-367-1. United Nations Environment Programme: Global Outlook for Ice and Snow http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/ice_sheets.html
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's oceans, with an area of about 106,460,000 square kilometers. It covers 20 percent of the Earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area, it separates the "Old World" from the "New World". The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, the Americas to the west; as one component of the interconnected global ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, the Southern Ocean in the south. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean and the South Atlantic Ocean at about 8°N. Scientific explorations of the Atlantic include the Challenger expedition, the German Meteor expedition, Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the United States Navy Hydrographic Office; the oldest known mentions of an "Atlantic" sea come from Stesichorus around mid-sixth century BC: Atlantikoi pelágei and in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC: Atlantis thalassa where the name refers to "the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles", said to be part of the sea that surrounds all land.
Thus, on one hand, the name refers to Atlas, the Titan in Greek mythology, who supported the heavens and who appeared as a frontispiece in Medieval maps and lent his name to modern atlases. On the other hand, to early Greek sailors and in Ancient Greek mythological literature such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, this all-encompassing ocean was instead known as Oceanus, the gigantic river that encircled the world. In contrast, the term "Atlantic" referred to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast; the Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of millions of years ago. The term "Aethiopian Ocean", derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century. During the Age of Discovery, the Atlantic was known to English cartographers as the Great Western Ocean; the term The Pond is used by British and American speakers in context to the Atlantic Ocean, as a form of meiosis, or sarcastic understatement.
The term dates to as early as 1640, first appearing in print in pamphlet released during the reign of Charles I, reproduced in 1869 in Nehemiah Wallington's Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in The Reign of Charles I, where "great Pond" is used in reference to the Atlantic Ocean by Francis Windebank, Charles I's Secretary of State. The International Hydrographic Organization defined the limits of the oceans and seas in 1953, but some of these definitions have been revised since and some are not used by various authorities and countries, see for example the CIA World Factbook. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies; the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea. To the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe: the Strait of Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean; the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border.
In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean. The Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays and seas; these include the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caribbean Sea, Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, part of the Drake Passage, Gulf of Mexico, Labrador Sea, Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Norwegian Sea all of the Scotia Sea, other tributary water bodies. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23.5% of the global ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23.3% of the total volume of the earth's oceans. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3; the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the Milwaukee Deep in the Puerto Rico Trench, is 8,486 m.
The bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S; the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2,000 m along most of its length, but is interrupted by larger transform faults at two places: the Romanche Trench near the Equator and the Gibbs Fracture Zone at 53°N; the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the othe
Glacial motion
Glacial motion is the motion of glaciers, which can be likened to rivers of ice. It has played an important role in sculpting many landscapes. Most lakes in the world occupy basins scoured out by glaciers. Glacial motion can be fast or slow, but is around 1 metre/day. Glacier motion occurs from four processes, all driven by gravity: basal sliding, glacial quakes generating fractional movements of large sections of ice, bed deformation, internal deformation. In the case of basal sliding, the entire glacier slides over its bed; this type of motion is enhanced if the bed is soft sediment, if the glacier bed is thawed and if meltwater is prevalent. Bed deformation is thus limited to areas of sliding. Seasonal melt ponding and penetrating under glaciers shows seasonal acceleration and deceleration of ice flows affecting whole icesheets; some glaciers experience glacial quakes—glaciers "as large as Manhattan and as tall as the Empire State Building, can move 10 meters in less than a minute, a jolt, sufficient to generate moderate seismic waves."
There has been an increasing pattern of these ice quakes - "Quakes ranged from six to 15 per year from 1993 to 2002 jumped to 20 in 2003, 23 in 2004, 32 in the first 10 months of 2005." A glacier, frozen up to its bed does not experience basal sliding. Internal deformation occurs; this takes place most near the glacier bed, where pressures are highest. There are glaciers that move via sliding, glacial quakes, others that move entirely through deformation. If a glacier's terminus moves forward faster than it melts, the net result is advance. Glacier retreat occurs when more material ablates from the terminus than is replenished by flow into that region. Glaciologists consider that trends in mass balance for glaciers are more fundamental than the advance or retreat of the termini of individual glaciers. In the years since 1960, there has been a striking decline in the overall volume of glaciers worldwide; this decline is correlated with global warming. As a glacier thins, due to the loss of mass it will slow down and crevassing will decrease.
Studying glacial motion and the landforms that result requires tools from many different disciplines: physical geography and geology are among the areas sometime grouped together and called earth science. During the Pleistocene, huge sheets of ice called continental glaciers advanced over much of the earth; the movement of these continental glaciers created many now-familiar glacial landforms. As the glaciers were expanded, due to their accumulating weight of snow and ice, they crushed and redistributed surface rocks, creating erosional landforms such as striations and hanging valleys; when the glaciers retreated leaving behind their freight of crushed rock and sand, depositional landforms were created, such as moraines, eskers and kames. The stone walls found in New England contain many glacial erratics, rocks that were dragged by a glacier many miles from their bedrock origin. At some point, if an Alpine glacier becomes too thin it will stop moving; this will result in the end of any basal erosion.
The stream issuing from the glacier will become clearer as glacial flour diminishes. Lakes and ponds can be caused by glacial movement. Kettle lakes form. Moraine-dammed lakes occur. Cryoseism Glacial earthquake Glacial lake outburst flood How glaciers form and flow Trends in glacier mass balance Animation of glacial advance Advance and retreat of Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound Physical geography of glacial landforms Links to more glacier resources online North Cascade Glacier Climate Project Research
Sediment
Sediment is a occurring material, broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example and silt can be carried in suspension in river water and on reaching the sea bed deposited by sedimentation and if buried, may become sandstone and siltstone. Sediments are most transported by water, but wind and glaciers. Beach sands and river channel deposits are examples of fluvial transport and deposition, though sediment often settles out of slow-moving or standing water in lakes and oceans. Desert sand dunes and loess are examples of aeolian deposition. Glacial moraine deposits and till are ice-transported sediments. Sediment can be classified based on its grain composition. Sediment size is measured on a log base 2 scale, called the "Phi" scale, which classifies particles by size from "colloid" to "boulder". Composition of sediment can be measured in terms of: parent rock lithology mineral composition chemical make-up.
This leads to an ambiguity in which clay can be used as a composition. Sediment is transported based on the strength of the flow that carries it and its own size, volume and shape. Stronger flows will increase the lift and drag on the particle, causing it to rise, while larger or denser particles will be more to fall through the flow. Rivers and streams carry sediment in their flows; this sediment can be in a variety of locations within the flow, depending on the balance between the upwards velocity on the particle, the settling velocity of the particle. These relationships are shown in the following table for the Rouse number, a ratio of sediment fall velocity to upwards velocity. Rouse = Settling velocity Upwards velocity from lift and drag = w s κ u ∗ where w s is the fall velocity κ is the von Kármán constant u ∗ is the shear velocity If the upwards velocity is equal to the settling velocity, sediment will be transported downstream as suspended load. If the upwards velocity is much less than the settling velocity, but still high enough for the sediment to move, it will move along the bed as bed load by rolling and saltating.
If the upwards velocity is higher than the settling velocity, the sediment will be transported high in the flow as wash load. As there are a range of different particle sizes in the flow, it is common for material of different sizes to move through all areas of the flow for given stream conditions. Sediment motion can create self-organized structures such as ripples, dunes, or antidunes on the river or stream bed; these bedforms are preserved in sedimentary rocks and can be used to estimate the direction and magnitude of the flow that deposited the sediment. Overland flow can transport them downslope; the erosion associated with overland flow may occur through different methods depending on meteorological and flow conditions. If the initial impact of rain droplets dislodges soil, the phenomenon is called rainsplash erosion. If overland flow is directly responsible for sediment entrainment but does not form gullies, it is called "sheet erosion". If the flow and the substrate permit channelization, gullies may form.
The major fluvial environments for deposition of sediments include: Deltas Point bars Alluvial fans Braided rivers Oxbow lakes Levees Waterfalls Wind results in the transportation of fine sediment and the formation of sand dune fields and soils from airborne dust. Glaciers carry a wide range of sediment sizes, deposit it in moraines; the overall balance between sediment in transport and sediment being deposited on the bed is given by the Exner equation. This expression states that the rate of increase in bed elevation due to deposition is proportional to the amount of sediment that falls out of the flow; this equation is important in that changes in the power of the flow change the ability of the flow to carry sediment, this is reflected in the patterns of erosion and deposition observed throughout a stream. This can be localized, due to small obstacles. Erosion and deposition can be regional. Deposition can occur due to dam emplacement that causes the river to pool and deposit its entire load, or due to base level rise.
Seas and lakes accumulate sediment over time. The sediment can consist of terrigenous material, which originates on land, but may be deposited in either terrestrial, marine, or lacustrine environments, or of sediments originating in the body of water. Terrigenous material is supplied by nearby rivers and streams or reworked marine sediment. In the mid-ocean, the exoskeletons of dead organisms are responsible for sediment accumulation. Deposited sediments are the source of sedimentary rocks, which can contain fossils of
Diamond
Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. At room temperature and pressure, another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form, but diamond never converts to it. Diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are utilized in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools, they are the reason that diamond anvil cells can subject materials to pressures found deep in the Earth. Because the arrangement of atoms in diamond is rigid, few types of impurity can contaminate it. Small numbers of defects or impurities color diamond blue, brown, purple, orange or red. Diamond has high optical dispersion. Most natural diamonds have ages between 1 billion and 3.5 billion years. Most were formed at depths between 150 and 250 kilometers in the Earth's mantle, although a few have come from as deep as 800 kilometers. Under high pressure and temperature, carbon-containing fluids dissolved minerals and replaced them with diamonds.
Much more they were carried to the surface in volcanic eruptions and deposited in igneous rocks known as kimberlites and lamproites. Synthetic diamonds can be grown from high-purity carbon under high pressures and temperatures or from hydrocarbon gas by chemical vapor deposition. Imitation diamonds can be made out of materials such as cubic zirconia and silicon carbide. Natural and imitation diamonds are most distinguished using optical techniques or thermal conductivity measurements. Diamond is a solid form of pure carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal. Solid carbon comes in different forms known as allotropes depending on the type of chemical bond; the two most common allotropes of pure carbon are graphite. In graphite the bonds are sp2 orbital hybrids and the atoms form in planes with each bound to three nearest neighbors 120 degrees apart. In diamond they are sp3 and the atoms form tetrahedra with each bound to four nearest neighbors. Tetrahedra are rigid, the bonds are strong, of all known substances diamond has the greatest number of atoms per unit volume, why it is both the hardest and the least compressible.
It has a high density, ranging from 3150 to 3530 kilograms per cubic metre in natural diamonds and 3520 kg/m³ in pure diamond. In graphite, the bonds between nearest neighbors are stronger but the bonds between planes are weak, so the planes can slip past each other. Thus, graphite is much softer than diamond. However, the stronger bonds make graphite less flammable. Diamonds have been adapted for many uses because of the material's exceptional physical characteristics. Most notable are its extreme hardness and thermal conductivity, as well as wide bandgap and high optical dispersion. Diamond's ignition point is 720 -- 800 °C in 850 -- 1000 °C in air; the equilibrium pressure and temperature conditions for a transition between graphite and diamond is well established theoretically and experimentally. The pressure changes linearly between 1.7 GPa at 0 K and 12 GPa at 5000 K. However, the phases have a wide region about this line where they can coexist. At normal temperature and pressure, 20 °C and 1 standard atmosphere, the stable phase of carbon is graphite, but diamond is metastable and its rate of conversion to graphite is negligible.
However, at temperatures above about 4500 K, diamond converts to graphite. Rapid conversion of graphite to diamond requires pressures well above the equilibrium line: at 2000 K, a pressure of 35 GPa is needed. Above the triple point, the melting point of diamond increases with increasing pressure. At high pressures and germanium have a BC8 body-centered cubic crystal structure, a similar structure is predicted for carbon at high pressures. At 0 K, the transition is predicted to occur at 1100 GPa; the most common crystal structure of diamond is called diamond cubic. It is formed of unit cells stacked together. Although there are 18 atoms in the figure, each corner atom is shared by eight unit cells and each atom in the center of a face is shared by two, so there are a total of eight atoms per unit cell; each side of the unit cell is 3.57 angstroms in length. A diamond cubic lattice can be thought of as two interpenetrating face-centered cubic lattices with one displaced by 1/4 of the diagonal along a cubic cell, or as one lattice with two atoms associated with each lattice point.
Looked at from a <1 1 1> crystallographic direction, it is formed of layers stacked in a repeating ABCABC... pattern. Diamonds can form an ABAB... structure, known as hexagonal diamond or lonsdaleite, but this is far less common and is formed under different conditions from cubic carbon. Diamonds occur most as euhedral or rounded octahedra and twinned octahedra known as macles; as diamond's crystal structure has a cubic arrangement of the atoms, they have many facets that belong to a cube, rhombicosidodecahedron, tetrakis hexahedron or disdyakis dodecahedron. The crystals can be elongated. Diamonds are found coated in nyf, an opaque gum-like skin; some diamonds have opaque fibers. They are referred to as opaque if the fibers
Sedimentary rock
Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of small particules and subsequent cementation of mineral or organic particles on the floor of oceans or other bodies of water at the Earth's surface. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes; the particles that form a sedimentary rock are called sediment, may be composed of geological detritus or biological detritus. Before being deposited, the geological detritus was formed by weathering and erosion from the source area, transported to the place of deposition by water, ice, mass movement or glaciers, which are called agents of denudation. Biological detritus was formed by bodies and parts of dead aquatic organisms, as well as their fecal mass, suspended in water and piling up on the floor of water bodies. Sedimentation may occur as dissolved minerals precipitate from water solution; the sedimentary rock cover of the continents of the Earth's crust is extensive, but the total contribution of sedimentary rocks is estimated to be only 8% of the total volume of the crust.
Sedimentary rocks are only a thin veneer over a crust consisting of igneous and metamorphic rocks. Sedimentary rocks are deposited in layers as strata; the study of sedimentary rocks and rock strata provides information about the subsurface, useful for civil engineering, for example in the construction of roads, tunnels, canals or other structures. Sedimentary rocks are important sources of natural resources like coal, fossil fuels, drinking water or ores; the study of the sequence of sedimentary rock strata is the main source for an understanding of the Earth's history, including palaeogeography and the history of life. The scientific discipline that studies the properties and origin of sedimentary rocks is called sedimentology. Sedimentology is part of both geology and physical geography and overlaps with other disciplines in the Earth sciences, such as pedology, geomorphology and structural geology. Sedimentary rocks have been found on Mars. Sedimentary rocks can be subdivided into four groups based on the processes responsible for their formation: clastic sedimentary rocks, biochemical sedimentary rocks, chemical sedimentary rocks, a fourth category for "other" sedimentary rocks formed by impacts and other minor processes.
Clastic sedimentary rocks are composed of other rock fragments that were cemented by silicate minerals. Clastic rocks are composed of quartz, rock fragments, clay minerals, mica. Clastic sedimentary rocks, are subdivided according to the dominant particle size. Most geologists use the Udden-Wentworth grain size scale and divide unconsolidated sediment into three fractions: gravel and mud; the classification of clastic sedimentary rocks parallels this scheme. This tripartite subdivision is mirrored by the broad categories of rudites and lutites in older literature; the subdivision of these three broad categories is based on differences in clast shape, grain size or texture. Conglomerates are dominantly composed of rounded gravel, while breccias are composed of dominantly angular gravel. Sandstone classification schemes vary but most geologists have adopted the Dott scheme, which uses the relative abundance of quartz and lithic framework grains and the abundance of a muddy matrix between the larger grains.
Composition of framework grains The relative abundance of sand-sized framework grains determines the first word in a sandstone name. Naming depends on the dominance of the three most abundant components quartz, feldspar, or the lithic fragments that originated from other rocks. All other minerals are considered accessories and not used in the naming of the rock, regardless of abundance. Quartz sandstones have >90% quartz grains Feldspathic sandstones have <90% quartz grains and more feldspar grains than lithic grains Lithic sandstones have <90% quartz grains and more lithic grains than feldspar grainsAbundance of muddy matrix material between sand grains When sand-sized particles are deposited, the space between the grains either remains open or is filled with mud. "Clean" sandstones with open pore space are called arenites. Muddy sandstones with abundant muddy matrix are called wackes. Six sandstone names are possible using the descriptors for grain composition and the amount of matrix. For example, a quartz arenite would be composed of quartz grains and have little or no clayey matrix between the grains, a lithic wacke would have abundant lithic grains and abundant muddy matrix, etc.
Although the Dott classification scheme is used by sedimentologists, common names like greywacke and quartz sandstone are still used by non-specialists and in popular literature. Mudrocks are sedimentary rocks composed of at least 50% silt- and clay-sized particles; these fine-grained particles are transported by turbulent flow in water or air, deposited as the flow calms and the particles settle out of suspension. Most authors presently
Continental drift
Continental drift is the theory that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The speculation that continents might have'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596; the concept was independently and more developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, but his theory was rejected by many for lack of any motive mechanism. Arthur Holmes proposed mantle convection for that mechanism; the idea of continental drift has since been subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics, which explains that the continents move by riding on plates of the Earth's lithosphere. Abraham Ortelius, Theodor Christoph Lilienthal, Alexander von Humboldt, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini, others had noted earlier that the shapes of continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean seem to fit together. W. J. Kious described Ortelius' thoughts in this way: Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus... suggested that the Americas were "torn away from Europe and Africa... by earthquakes and floods" and went on to say: "The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers the coasts of the three."
In 1889, Alfred Russel Wallace remarked, "It was a general belief amongst geologists, that the great features of the earth's surface, no less than the smaller ones, were subject to continual mutations, that during the course of known geological time the continents and great oceans had and again, changed places with each other." He quotes Charles Lyell as saying, "Continents, although permanent for whole geological epochs, shift their positions in the course of ages." and claims that the first to throw doubt on this was James Dwight Dana in 1849. In his Manual of Geology, Dana wrote, "The continents and oceans had their general outline or form defined in earliest time; this has been proved with respect to North America from the position and distribution of the first beds of the Silurian – those of the Potsdam epoch. … and this will prove to the case in Primordial time with the other continents also". Dana was enormously influential in America – his Manual of Mineralogy is still in print in revised form – and the theory became known as Permanence theory.
This appeared to be confirmed by the exploration of the deep sea beds conducted by the Challenger expedition, 1872-6, which showed that contrary to expectation, land debris brought down by rivers to the ocean is deposited comparatively close to the shore on what is now known as the continental shelf. This suggested that the oceans were a permanent feature of the Earth's surface, did not change places with the continents. Apart from the earlier speculations mentioned in the previous section, the idea that the American continents had once formed a single landmass together with Europe and Asia before assuming their present shapes and positions was speculated by several scientists before Alfred Wegener's 1912 paper. Although Wegener's theory was formed independently and was more complete than those of his predecessors, Wegener credited a number of past authors with similar ideas: Franklin Coxworthy, Roberto Mantovani, William Henry Pickering and Frank Bursley Taylor. In addition, Eduard Suess had proposed a supercontinent Gondwana in 1885 and the Tethys Ocean in 1893, assuming a land-bridge between the present continents submerged in the form of a geosyncline, John Perry had written an 1895 paper proposing that the earth's interior was fluid, disagreeing with Lord Kelvin on the age of the earth.
For example: the similarity of southern continent geological formations had led Roberto Mantovani to conjecture in 1889 and 1909 that all the continents had once been joined into a supercontinent. In Mantovani's conjecture, this continent broke due to volcanic activity caused by thermal expansion, the new continents drifted away from each other because of further expansion of the rip-zones, where the oceans now lie; this led Mantovani to propose an Expanding Earth theory. Continental drift without expansion was proposed by Frank Bursley Taylor, who suggested in 1908 that the continents were moved into their present positions by a process of "continental creep". In a paper he proposed that this occurred by their being dragged towards the equator by tidal forces during the hypothesized capture of the moon in the Cretaceous, resulting in "general crustal creep" toward the equator. Although his proposed mechanism was wrong, he was the first to realize the insight that one of the effects of continental motion would be the formation of mountains, attributed the formation of the Himalayas to the collision between the Indian subcontinent with Asia.
Wegener said that of all those theories, Taylor's, although not developed, had the most similarities to his own. In the mid-20th century, the theory of continental drift was referred to as the "Taylor-Wegener hypothesis", although this terminology fell out of common use. Alfred Wegener first presented his hypothesis to the German Geological Society on 6 January 1912, his hypothesis was that the continents had once formed a single landmass, called Pangaea, before breaking apart and drifting to their present locations. Wegener was the first to use the phrase "continental drift" and formally publish the hypothesis that the continents
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