Characteristic thermal regimes of plate tectonics and their metamorphic imprint throughout Earth history: When did Earth first adopt a plate tectonics mode of behavior

2008 ◽  
pp. 97-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brown
Keyword(s):  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Thermal Regimes

scholarly journals Constraining crustal silica on ancient Earth

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (35) ◽  
pp. 21101-21107 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Brenhin Keller ◽  
T. Mark Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Continental Crust ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Incompatible Element ◽  
Silica Content ◽  
Efficient Mechanism ◽  
Element Abundances ◽  
Terrigenous Sediments ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Crustal Composition ◽  
Earth’S Mantle

Accurately quantifying the composition of continental crust on Hadean and Archean Earth is critical to our understanding of the physiography, tectonics, and climate of our planet at the dawn of life. One longstanding paradigm involves the growth of a relatively mafic planetary crust over the first 1 to 2 billion years of Earth history, implying a lack of modern plate tectonics and a paucity of subaerial crust, and consequently lacking an efficient mechanism to regulate climate. Others have proposed a more uniformitarian view in which Archean and Hadean continents were only slightly more mafic than at present. Apart from complications in assessing early crustal composition introduced by crustal preservation and sampling biases, effects such as the secular cooling of Earth’s mantle and the biologically driven oxidation of Earth’s atmosphere have not been fully investigated. We find that the former complicates efforts to infer crustal silica from compatible or incompatible element abundances, while the latter undermines estimates of crustal silica content inferred from terrigenous sediments. Accounting for these complications, we find that the data are most parsimoniously explained by a model with nearly constant crustal silica since at least the early Archean.

GEN3SIS: An engine for simulating eco-evolutionary processes in the context of plate tectonics and deep-time climate variations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Hagen ◽  
Renske E. Onstein ◽  
Benjamin Flück ◽  
Fabian Fopp ◽  
Florian Hartig ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Climate Variations ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Cold Adapted ◽  
Mountain Ranges ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Himalayan Mountain ◽  
Warming World

<p>Explaining the origin of large-scale biodiversity gradients has been a key aspiration of early naturalists such as Wegener, Darwin and Humboldt; who looked at natural processes in an integrated way. Early on, these naturalists acknowledged the role of plate tectonics and climate variations in shaping modern day biodiversity patterns.<span> </span></p><p>As science advanced, the complexity of ecological, evolutionary, geological and climatological processes became evident while research became increasingly fragmented across different disciplines. Nevertheless, recent development in mechanistic modeling approaches now enable bringing disciplines back together, opening a new interdisciplinary scientific pathway.</p><p>Here, we present GEN3SIS, the GENeral Engine for Eco-Evolutionary SImulationS. It is the first spatially explicit eco-evolutionary model that incorporates deep-time Earth history, including plate tectonics, as well as climate variations in a modular way. The modular design allows exploring the consequences of user-defined biological processes that act across “real world” spatio-temporal landscapes. Emerging from the model are specie’s ranges, alpha and beta diversity patterns, ecological traits as well as phylogenies. Subsequently, these patterns can be compared to empirical data. Furthermore, GEN3SIS allows assessing paleoclimatic and paleogeographic hypotheses by using different Earth history scenarios and comparing simulation outputs with empirical biological data.</p><p>As a case study, we explore the cold-adapted plant biodiversity dynamics throughout the Earth’s Cenozoic history, based on a deep-time tectonic and climate reconstruction. The Cenozoic India-Asia collision formed the Himalayan mountain range. In this highly elevated region, the first cold niches of the Cenozoic appeared, demanding adaptation from the local living flora. We hindcast diversification of cold-adapted species with GEN3SIS, for which we use a topo-climatic reconstruction for the last 55 Myr. The model predicts the emergence of current cold-species richness patterns. Moreover, simulations indicate that cold-adapted flora emerged in the Oligocene, first in the Himalayas, followed by a spread to the Arctic. This agrees with observed low species richness and high nestedness of Arctic assemblages compared to those of the Himalayan mountain ranges. Under ongoing climate change a major loss of cold-adapted plant diversity is expected by the end of the century, particularly in lower latitude mountain ranges. Hindcasting and forecasting dynamics of cold-adapted lineages highlights the transient fate of cold organisms in a warming world.</p><p>GEN3SIS is made available as an R package, which allows customizing (i) the simulated landscape including environmental variables and (ii) all the processes interacting under different spatial and temporal scales. Consequently, GEN3SIS fosters collaborations between different natural disciplines and therefore contributes to an interdisciplinary understanding of the processes that shaped Earth’s history.</p>

A citation study of significant papers in plate tectonics

1984 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 221-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.P.W. Hodder ◽  
C. Balog
Keyword(s):  
Citation Analysis ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Physical Oceanography ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Magnetic Stratigraphy ◽  
Considerable Success ◽  
Earthquake Distribution ◽  
Geologic Processes ◽  
The Revolution

A consideration of the use made of selected papers in physical oceanography, magnetic stratigraphy, and earthquake distribution traces the development of the ideas necessary to the theory of plate tectonics, the presently accepted theory to explain geologic processes. The citation analysis undertaken of some thirty significant papers supports a previously proposed revolution m earth science thinking in the early 1970s. Al though the theory has enjoyed considerable success in unravell ing 'young' geology, its application to older rocks, particularly those that make up the continents, has been less successful. This may be because the 'revolution' has constrained earth scientists to think that present-day lateral crustal motions have been dominant throughout Earth history.

scholarly journals Global geochemical fingerprinting of plume intensity suggests coupling with the supercontinent cycle

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamed Gamal EL Dien ◽  
Luc S. Doucet ◽  
Zheng-Xiang Li ◽  
Grant Cox ◽  
Ross Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Shear Velocity ◽  
Mantle Plumes ◽  
Transition Elements ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Geochemical Fingerprinting ◽  
Basaltic Rocks ◽  
Plume Magmatism ◽  
Mantle Temperature ◽  
Supercontinent Cycle

AbstractPlate tectonics and mantle plumes are two of the most fundamental solid-Earth processes that have operated through much of Earth history. For the past 300 million years, mantle plumes are known to derive mostly from two large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) above the core-mantle boundary, referred to as the African and Pacific superplumes, but their possible connection with plate tectonics is debated. Here, we demonstrate that transition elements (Ni, Cr, and Fe/Mn) in basaltic rocks can be used to trace plume-related magmatism through Earth history. Our analysis indicates the presence of a direct relationship between the intensity of plume magmatism and the supercontinent cycle, suggesting a possible dynamic coupling between supercontinent and superplume events. In addition, our analysis shows a consistent sudden drop in MgO, Ni and Cr at ~3.2–3.0 billion years ago, possibly indicating an abrupt change in mantle temperature at the start of global plate tectonics.

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