Table Of ContentFUR THER TITLES IN THIS SERIES
1. J. AUBOUIN
GEOSYNCLINES
2.R.W. VAN BEMMELEN
GEODYNAMIC MODELS
3. A. SUGIMURA AND S. UYEDA
ISLAND ARCS, JAPAN AND ITS ENVIRONS
4. A.R. RITSEMA (Editor)
THE UPPER MANTLE
5. C. LOMNITZ
GLOBAL TECTONICS AND EARTHQUAKE RISK
6. X. LE PICHΣN, J. FRANCHETEAU AND J. BONNIN
PLATE TECTONICS
7. R. W. GIRDLER (Editor)
EAST AFRICAN RIFTS
8. S. MUELLER (Editor)
THE STRUCTURE OF THE EARTH'S CRUST
9. N. PAVONIANDR. GREEN (Editors)
RECENT CRUSTAL MOVEMENTS
Developments in Geotectonics 10
THE EXPANDING EARTH
S. W A R R EN C A R EY
Department of Geology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania (Australia)
ELSEVIER SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING COMPANY
Amsterdam - Oxford - New York - 1976
ELSEVIER SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING COMPANY
335 Jan van Galenstraat
P.O. Box 211, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Distributors for the United States and Canada:
ELSEVIER/NORTH-HOLLAND INC.
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New York, N.Y. 10017
With 197 illustrations and 11 tables
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Carey, Samual Warren.
The expanding Earth.
(Developments in geotectonics ; 10)
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
1. Geodynamics. 2. Earth. I. Title. II. Series.
qí:511.C3U 551 76-U1399
ISBN 0-¥fU-i+litó5-l
Copyright © 1976 by Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
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Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Jan van Galenstraat 335, Amsterdam
Printed in The Netherlands
FACE OF THE EARTH
Suess
Das Antlitz der Erde y or "The Face of the Earth", was the title of the
first great magnum opus on the gross surface features of the earth by Eduard
Suess late last century. A recent British television documentary with the
same purpose bore the same title. Suess' masterpiece was the product of one
great mind. The TV show was produced by a very large team. Suess wrote
for a scientific oligarchy. The TV documentary was directed at the man in
the street. In Suess' day the only bird's-eye view was from a mountain-top.
In this decade all have seen the face of the earth as viewed from the moon.
From nineteenth-century elitism to twentieth-century mass communication, what
has really happened to the science of the earth?
Early science was egocentric, and uniformitarian, in that it assumed
that things have always been much as we now see them, at least since the
earliest beginning too hazed in ignorance to discuss. A century ago geolo
gists believed that the mass, volume, and diameter of the earth were fixed
inheritances, that the axial obliquity to the ecliptic was immutable, that
the earth was a dying body dissipating primal heat from a still molten core,
that magnetic north was north and south was south, and always had been so,
that physical constants had been and would remain constants, and that conti
nents were fixed permanent features which heaved and sagged from time to time
against an ebbing and flooding sea. The geologist's task was to describe
and understand the details of a planet on which the really big things had
happened eons ago as a prologue before his saga opened.
During the nineties Suess knew this had to be changed, for he recognized
that 200 to 300 million years ago Africa, South America, India, and Australia
had been a super-continent sharing the Glossopteris flora and a common ice
age. But Suess assumed, not that Africa and the rest had moved, but that
the parts between had foundered to form new oceans.
Wegener
Wegener took the first big unorthodox step by concluding that at the
time in question all the main land masses of the world had been a single
supercontinent, Pangaea, which had disrupted into separate blocks that
drifted apart like great tabular icebergs, opening the Arctic, Atlantic, and
Indian Oceans and reducing the area of the Pacific by a like amount (Fig. 1).
All this in the latest twentieth of the earth's lifel Others indeed had
preceded him (e.g. Snider, 1858, Taylor, 1910, Baker, 1911) but pioneers in
science rarely make a home run. Wegener's distinction was his action across
many specialist fields with sufficient errors to invite devastating counter
attack -- successful but Pyrrhic. Wegener's thesis started violent controv
ersy, but when the dust settled, most were cowed by dissenting physicists,
whose edicts were valid enough for the simple models which for them repre
sented Earth. So, few followed Wegener.
The orocline concept
As a student in the early thirties, it seemed to me that if continental
shields had moved the long distances visualised by Wegener, then the orogenic
belts between them, which were mobile and deforming at the relevant times,
must record indelibly the relative motions. A rifting region where stable
shields were separating could not be wholly obliterated by later events, and
the pliable zones must still record the stretching and bending induced in
them by the motion of the shields they separated. These deformations should
be obvious in the plan view of the surface, where thousands of kilometres of
displacement in bending and tearing
Upper
and S drags, should be apparent. -iiierous
And so it was. Even the most prim
itive physical maps of the earth's
surface confirmed these inductions.
These disturbed belts certainly
looked as though they had been bent
and stretched and disrupted (Figs. 2 Eocene
§ 91). I knew by 1938 that if you
straightened the obvious bends,
restored the visible stretches, and
reunited the dislocations, these
processes alone reproduced a Pangaea Older
'uQíernary
essentially the same as Wegener had
deduced from wholly different grounds.
Most of what I published in the 1954
orocline paper was in the 1937 draft
of my doctoral thesis, but had to be
Fig. 1
omitted at the eleventh hour because
Dispersion of Pangaea as
I realised that these concepts were
visualized by Wegener.
too radical for acceptance then, and would have cost me my degree. Even in
1954, publication was refused by referees of the Geological Society of
Australia.
In the late forties and early fifties came palaeomagnetism, led by
Graham, Blackett, Runcorn, Gough, and others. Many rocks record the direc
tion of the magnetic field at the time of their birth and hence the local
magnetic latitudes and the magnetic meridian of that time. Such observations
leave no doubt that the continents have separated and have relatively rotated
to the extent claimed by Wegener. A third of the oroclinal bends I had des
cribed have been subjected to the palaeomagnetic test (Table 1). Every
orocline tested has been confirmed.
Fig. 2
The orocline concept
(from Garey, 1955a).
TABLE I Tectonic Rotations Subsequently Confirmed Palaeomagnetically
Rotation Palaeo-
Rotated Block predicted magnetic References
by Carey rotation
observed
N. America to Europe 30° 30° 8, figs 5, 9, 10, 13, 14; 9, table 4; 35
Africa to S. America 45° 45° 8, figs 14, 17, 21, 24; 24, fig 5
Newfoundland 25° 25° s 10; 11; 12; 17, figs 6, 7; 18; 35
Spain 35° s 35° s 1; 5, figs 2, 3; 6; 8, fig 33; 13; 19, fig.10.10; 25a; 28; 30; 33; 35
Italy 110° s 107° s 5, fig 21; 8, figs 31, 32; 13, p.84; 17, figs 4, 5; 23; 35; 44; 48
Corsica and Sardinia 90° s 50° s 5, fig 21; 8, figs 31, 32, 51; 17, figs 4, 5; 22, fig 2; 29; 32; 35; 47
Sicily to Africa 0° 0° 5, figs 20, 21; 8, fig 32; 17, fig 32; 40
Arabia to Africa 3ii°s 7° s 5, fig 12; 8, figs 1, 2, 36; 14; 17, fig 7; 25b; 35
India to Africa 70° s 70° s 5, figs 10, 12; 6; 8, figs 1, 2, 36, 51; 19; 31; 35
New Guinea 35° 40° s 3, figs 23, 25; 8, fig 38b; 27; 35
Honshu N. and S. 40° 58° 8, figs 40b, 40c; 15, fig 7; 19 , p.249, fig 10.5; 32; 35, figs 1, 4;
Mendocino orocline 60° d 63° d 2; 4; 7; 8, fig 56; 11; 19, p.249; 21, figs 1, 3; 26; 32; 35; 37, p.93
Puerto Rico to S. America 45° s 53° s 17, figs 12-14; 36; 39
Jamaica to S. America 42° s 50° s 17, figs 12-14; 38; 39; 46; 49
Hispaniola to S. America 39° s 40° s 17, figs 12-14; 41; 46
Colombia large s 80° s 8, fig 26; 39
Appalachian Arcs 20°-40° 29° 16, p.142; 20, p.165; 32
Malay Peninsula Ca 70°d 70° d 3; 8; 34; 43, p.645; 45, figs 43, 53;
References
1 Argandj 1924 18 Blacky 1964 34 Kawai, Hirooka S Nakajimaj 1969
2 Becker, 1934 19 Irving, 1964 35 Carey, 1970
3 Carey, 1938 20 Irving & Opdyke, 1964 36 Fink <§ Harrison, 1971
4 Torreson, Murphy & Graham, 1949 21 Watkins, 1964a, J964b 37 Irving & Yole, 1972
5 Carey, 1955a 22 Ashworth & Nairn, 1965 38 Dasg^φta & Vinoenz, 1973
6 CZe^^^ Deutsch, Everitt & Stubbs, 1957 23 De Boer, 1965 39 MacDonatd & Opdyke, 1973
7 Cox, 1957 24 Creer, 1965a 40 Nairn, Gregor & Νegendank, 1973
8 Carey, 1958a 25 Girdler, 1965a, 1965b 41 Vincenz, Dasgupta & Steinhauser, 1973
9 Irving, 1958 26 Watkins, 1965 42 y-incenz (δ Dasgupta, 1973
10 Z^w Bo-LS^ 27 Green & Pitt, 1967 43 McElhinny, Haile & Crawford, 1974
11 Irving, 1959 28 7an der Voo, 1967 44 Lowrie & Alvarez, 1974
12 il^a-im. Frost & Light, 1959 29 Nairn & Westphal, 1968 45 Carey, 1975
13 7an Hilten, 1960 30 Watkins & Richardson, 1968 46 Dasgupta & Vincenz, 1975
14 Irving & Tarling, 1961 31 Wensink, 1968 47 Orsini, Velluntini & Westphal, 1975
15 Kawai, I to & Kume, 1961 32 Tarling, 1969 48 Lowrie & Alvarez, 1975
16 Carey, 1962a 33 7an áer 49 Vincenz, Steinhauser & Dasgupta, 1973
17 CoreT/, 1963
s = sinistral rotation d = dextral rotation
Decades in contempt
During the thirties and forties and early fifties Wegener's ideas were
generally rejected as a fantasy - fascinating but false. "E'in Marchen^ a
pipe dream, a beautiful fairy story" chanted the American bandwaggon. During
these decades of repudiation, arguments which denied continental dispersion
passed without scrutiny or test. They were correct, a priori^ because
everybody knew that continental drift was wrong. Otherwise-great scientists
like Harold Jeffreys got away with fatuous statements such as (1929, p.322):
"the alleged fit of South America into the angle of Africa is seen on a
moment's examination of a globe to be really a misfit of about 15°. The
coasts along the arms of the angle could not be brought within several hun
dreds of kilometres of each other without distortion. The widths of the
shallow margins of the ocean near the continents lend no support to the idea
that the forms have been altered considerably by denudation and redeposition;
and if the forms had been altered by folding there would be great mountain
ranges at a distance from the angles with their axes pointing towards the
angles, which is not the case."
I knew by 1931 that this was incorrect, because I had oblique stereo-
graphic projections to check it. I did not bother to publish this because
anyone who checked Jeffreys' statement, would find it wrong, and it seemed
Fig. 3
Fit of Africa and South
America at the 2000 m
isobath. (From Carey 1955b).
to me that the faux pas would be generally recognized. On the contrary,
this became one of the standard dogmas to discredit continental dispersion.
Finally, when Dr. G.M. Lees, in his 1953 presidential address to the
Geological Society of London, cited this reputed misfit as one of his three
grounds for dismissing continental drift (Lees 1953, p.234), I sent him the
Fig 4
Segment of spherically moulded tracing foil on hemispherical drawing
table, showing fit of Africa and South America at 2000 m isobath, as
traced directly from a thirty-inch globe. (From Carey 1955b).
