Lesson 2 Flashcards
Prior to the 1700’s, in the west, what determined how the Earth’s past was imagined?
- The Christian Bible
Who is James Ussher and what was his calculation?
- He was an early scholar from the 1600s and Irish Archbishop of Armagh
- He calculated the Earth had a beginning date of 9 AM on Monday, October 23rd, 4004 BC.
How old was the earth, according to Christians?
- 6000 years old
Who was Thomas Burnett?
- He was an Anglican churchman, who published “The Sacred Theory of the Earth” in 1961
- He challenged the conventional understanding of the Bible, allowing mountains to go up in contemplation.
- He developed the MUNDANE theory
What was “The Grand Tour?”
- The Grand Tour was one of the earliest forms of modern tourism from the 17th and 18th century.
- It was a rite of passage for many young English and European elites to polish off their formal education by exposing themselves to continental architecture and to geography, to history and culture
- It required a crossing of the European Alps and it was here where Burnett became increasingly intrigued by mountains
What was “The Great Flood?”
- Key to the Earth’s appearance was The Great Flood, that bibliccal story of a flood so great that it destroyed civilization in an act of divine retribution
- Burnett concluded that it would take 8 oceans of water to cover the highest mountain tops in 40 days of rain, and it didn’t add up
What is the Mundane Egg?
- A metaphor of the earth, where it was flawless in appearance, without hills or vales to disrupt its surface. The inner architecture was a fiery core, the yolk. A water filled abyss was the white of the egg which the shell of the earth floated
How did mountains build in the Mundane Egg?
- Over years, the sun dried out the Earth’s surface, causing it to crack and fracture
- Water pressed up into those cracks until it burst, resulting in a flood
- When the waters receded, they left chaos behind, the mountains.
- The mountains were signs of humanity’s sinfulness
Who was Georges Buffon?
- He was a French natural historian, who estimated the earth to be 75,000 years old in the mid 1700s
- He turned each of the seven Biblical days of creation into an epoch of indefinite length, creating space and time necessary for geologists to begin their work of exposing a deep history for the earth, all the while staying within the bounds of Biblical scripture
- The science of geology could now emerge without accusations of blasphemy
What is Catastrophism?
- Catastrophism is one of the schools of thinking that emerged among geologists regarding the age of the earth and the origin of mountains
- Catastrophism was the school that believed that the history of the earth was dominated by major geophysical revolutions that convulsed the planet with water and ice and fire and had all but extinguished life. Drastic tided waves, global tsunamis, severe earthquakes and volcanos, the passing of commets, all of this events had shaped the earth surface into its present disruption.
What is Uniformitarianism?
- Uniformitarianism is one of the schools of thinking that emerged among geologists regarding the age of the earth and the origin of mountains
- They held that the Earth had never been subject to a global catastrophe, earthquakes yes, volcanoes yes. These phenomena had certainly taken place through a geological history, but they were localized events. They rearranged the landscape only within their own vicinity.
- Change in the land was achieved astonishingly slowly by forces of wear and tear through the ordinance of nature, rain, snow, frost, rivers, seas.
- This required lots of time, millions of years
Who was Charles Lylell?
- Charles Lyell was a Scottish geologist of the 19th century who wrote the book “The Principles of Geology”
- Didn’t needs any special equipment or long training to decipher the earth’s history, just eyes
Who was Charles Darwin?
- Darwin followed Lyell, and interpreted landscape, and inspired his famous thinking on natural selection
- Iconic bird’s eye view high above Valparaiso on the top of the 1900 meter high peak, Cerro La Campana on the Main Chain of the Andes.
Where is Yoho National Park and what lake show’s it’s significance?
- Yoho National Park, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, also called the Burgess Shale, is the site of the world’s first protected complex marine ecosystem.
What is the Burgess Shale?
- The Burgess Shale is recognized as the most important fossil deposits in the world. It is 505 million years old, which places it in the middle of the Cambrian period
- It has fossil deposits of soft tissue organisms like worms
Who was Mary Anning?
- Marry Anning was an English fossil collector, who shined light upon ancient ages of monstrous creatures, mammoths and mammals, sea dragons, giant lizards, dinosaurs in the 1800s
Who was Alfred Wegener?
- A German meteorologist that first said continents move, and said that 300 million years ago, the continents were all part of a super continent, Pangaea
- Today, Wegener’s theory is the substantial basis for our understanding of plate tectonics and the formation of mountains
What is Pangaea?
- A single super continent, meaning all lands
What is Paleomagnetism?
- The study of the Earth’s magnetic field
What is the basic idea of Plate Tectonics?
- The Earth’s surface is broken into several rigid plates. These plates are made up of the Earth’s crust and the upper part of the mantle layer underneath.
What are the parts of the Earth in terms of Plate Tectonics?
- ) Crust - outer most layer
- ) Lithosphere - made up of the crust and upper mantle
- ) Asthenosphere - more malleable inner layer
- ) Mantle
- ) Core
What are Lithospheric Plates?
- They are comprised of either continental or oceanic crust or both.
- Ocean plates are thinner, less than 100km thick
- Continental plates are roughly 150-200km thick
How fast to plates move?
- From 1 - 10 centimeters per year (as fast as fingernails)
What makes plates move and how?
- Convection - hot material near the Earth’s core rises and cold mantle rock sinks. It’s the slow churning that’s been jostling the Earth’s crust around, arranging, and rearranging its surface, since the beginning of the planet
What is it called when plates pull apart and new volcanic material fills the void?
- Divergent Plate Boundaries
What are 2 types of divergent plate boundaries?
- ) Oceanic Spreading Ridges
2. ) Continental Rift Zones
What is the largest and best known undersea mountain range (oceanic spreading ridges)?
- The Mid Atlantic Ridge, which extends north south for several thousand kilometers, roughly parallel to the coastlines of Europe, Africa, and the Americas
What is the example of an active continental rift zone?
- East African Rift
- the African Plate and the Somalian Plate are slowly breaking apart and a new ocean basin will soon form
What is it called when plates push together and collide?
- Convergent Plate Boundaries
What does Subducted mean?
- Where an ocean plate collides with a continental plate, the denser ocean plate is pushed or subducted, beneath the more buoyant continental plate and is inevitable absorbed back into the hot inner earth
What happens at Subduction zones?
- Melted rock formed by subducting ocean crust can find its way to the surface, erupting and building volcanoes along the plate margins
What is the Pacific Ring of Fire?
- Pacific Ocean boundary that is surrounded by long stretches of volcanoes caused by subduction tectonic collisions
Where two continental plates collide, subduction does not occur so what happens?
- It is not easy for one plate to subduct beneath another, so the resulting collision can form the largest of mountain ranges
What is a Transform Margin? What is the example mentioned?
- Transform margins mark the slip sliding plates where plates grind pass each other in a mostly horizontal motion
- Ex.) San Andreas Fault in California, where North American and Pacific plates grind pass each other
What are 4 types of mountains?
- ) Volcanic Mountains
- ) Convergent Mountains or Orogens
- ) Fault-Block Mountains
- ) Dome Mountains
How do Volcanic Mountains form?
- When gas-rich molten rock, or magma, from deep within the Earth moves forcefully to the surface, erupts, and accumulates, and cools in various sizes and forms
- Magma is called lava when it breaks through the Earth’s crust
Volcanoes are associated with three basic tectonic regions:
- ) Rift-valley spreading centers (Mid-Atlantic Ridge)
- ) Along convergent boundaries (Mount Fujid or Ring of Fire)
- ) Above intraplate hotspots Hawaii
What is Hotspot Volcanism?
- Plumes of solid, yet mobile mantle rock, rise to the surface
- The mantle and crust above is always in motion
What is the tallest mountain in the world, measured from base to peak?
- Mauna Kea, rising 10,000 meters in Hawaii
How are Orogens formed?
- When plates and continents riding on them collide, the continental crust is to buoyant to be subducted and ends up being shortened instead. The accumulated layers of rock crumple, fold, and fault causing extraordinary uplift
A fold where younger rock is in the middle, between layers of older rock that have been uplifted on either side, Is called a…
Syncline
What is an Anticline?
- Folds where older rock have been brought up the middle
Folds occur in a variety of orientations and anticline or a syncline lying on its side is said to be…
Recumbent
What is a Thrust Fault?
- A gently sloping fault, where originally lower older rock have been pushed over younger, higher rocks, is called a thrust fault
In some places, multiple thrust faults have stacked slabs of rock, like overlapping shingles. These thrust faults are said to be…
Imbricate
How are Fault Block Mountains formed, and what is an example?
- They form when the faults in the Earth’s crust allow portions of the surface to drop and others to rise as opposed to earth folding over and bending under pressure and heat
- Ex.) Teton Range in the American Rocky Mountains
What is the Grand Teton?
- The highest mountain the Teton Range of the American Rocky Mountains
- 4200 meters high
How are Dome Mountains formed? What is an example?
- They are a result of a great amount of magma pushing itself up under the Earth’s crust. Without actually erupting onto the surface, the molten rock pushes out of the overlaying rock layers, and then cools and hardens.
- Ex.) West Butte - Alberta/Montana Border in the Sweetgrass Hills
Who was Bill Snow?
- First Nation from Stoney Nakoda
- He said the mountains are our temples, our sanctuaries and our resting places. They are a place of hope, a place of visions, a place of refuge. A very special and holy place where the Great Spirit speaks with us. Therefore, these mountains are our sacred places.
TechTip: What is a Wicking Layer?
- The first layer - its purpose is to keep you warm and dry
TechTip: What is an Insulation Layer?
- Second Layer - trap warm air
TechTip: What is a Warm OverLayer?
- 3rd Layer
TechTip: What are differences between Down and Synthetic materials?
- Down is more efficient and lighter, but usually more expensive and loses its ability to retain heat when wet.
- Synthetic can get wet and is robust for adverse conditions, but is heavier
TechTip: What is the outermost layer for?
- Weather protection
Interactive Map: The Scottish Highlands
Location - Northwestern Scotland
Interactive Map: The Mid-Atlantic Range
Location - The Atlantic Ocean
Divergent tectonic plate boundary
Interactive Map: The Sweetgrass Hills
Location - North-Central Montana, USA near the border
Dome mountains
Interactive Map: The Grand Teton
Location - Northwest Wyoming, USA
Highest peak in the Teton range
Interactive Map: Mount Kenya
Location - Central Kenya, Africa
stratovolcano created approximately 3 million years after the opening of the East African Rift
Interactive Map: Maunu Kea
Location - Hawaii
Mostly under water, tallest in world from base to summit
