Geology

We naturally regard the earth as a supremely important field of special investigation. So we come to the science devoted to the Earth, appropriately known as geology (from the Greek Gaia or ge, the ancestral Earth goddess of Greek mythology; and logy, a suffix denoting knowledge of). As a major science, however, geology deals not merely with land forms and other surface features of the rocky crust, but with the structure and behaviour of every part of the Earth, with special reference to the rocks and structures of the visible crust and all that can be learned from them. The Scope and Subdivisions of Geology Modern geology has for its aim , the deciphering of the whole evolution of the Earth and its inhabitants from the time of the earliest record that can be recognized in the rocks right down to the present day. The key words of the main branches are the materials of the Earths rocky framework (mineralogy and petrology), and their dispositions, i.e., their forms, structures and interrelationships (structural geology); the geological processes of machinery of the Earth, by which changes of all kinds are brought about (physical geology); and finally the succession of these changes in time, or the history of the earth (historical geology). The Earth is made of a great variety of materials, such as air, water, ice and living organisms, as well as minerals and rocks and the useful deposits of metallic ores and fuels which are associated with them. The relative movements of these materials (wind, rain, rivers, waves currents and glaciers; the growth and movements of plants and animals; and the movement of the hot materials inside the earth, as witnessed by volcanic activity) all bring about changes in the Earths crust and on its surface. The changes involve the development of new rocks from the old; and new distributions of land and sea, mountains and plains, and even of climate and weather. The scenery of today is only the latest stage of an ever changing kaleidoscopic series of widely varied landscapes and seascapes. Physical geology is concerned with all the terrestrial agents and processes of change and with the effects brought about by them. This branch of geology is by no means restricted to geomorphology, as we have seen. Its main interest is in the machinery of the Earth, and in the results, past and present, of the various processes concerned, all of which are still active in or at near the surface of the Earths surface or out of sight in depths. Of these results the changing positions of continents and oceans, fold mountains, rift valleys and ocean troughs which are its important examples. Others are the rock structures such as folds, that have resulted from movements and the deformations of the Earths crust. Tectonics, the study of these structures, is an important part of structural geology, which is also concerned with the forms and structures that characterize rocks when they are first formed. Changes of all kinds have been going on continuously throughout the lifetime of the Earth that is , for something like 4600 million years. To the geologist a rock is more than an aggregate of minerals; it is a page of the Earths autobiography with a story to unfold, if only he can read the language in which the record is written. Placed in their proper order from first to last stratigraphy, (and dated where possible

by determining the ages of radiometric minerals and rocks (geochronology), these pages embody the history of the earth. Moreover, it is common knowledge that many beds of rock contain the remains or impressions of shells or bones or leaves. These objects are called fossils, a term that was first used by Agricola (1494-1555) to anything of interest dug out of the ground, including minerals. Since the end of the eighteenth century, however, the term has been used only for the relics of animals and plants that inhabited the Earth in former times. Palaentology is the study of the remains of these ancestral forms of life, some of which resembling certain types of seaweeds, can be traced back for at least 3000 million years. Thus we see that historical geology deals not only with the nature and sequence o events brought about by the operation of the physical processes, but also with the history of the long procession of life through the ages. As palaeontological and stratigraphical knowledge grew, it became obvious that similar fauna and flora had developed at similar times in Earths history, on continents separated by extensive oceans. Conventional wisdom at the beginning of the twentieth century has it that the migration of species was by land bridges, which have given way long since back. One such land bridge was considered to have spanned the gap between Brazil and Africa and another between Europe and North America! F.B. Taylor of the U.S.A. and Alfred Wegener of Germany did not accept this idea. Taylor in 1908 and Wegener in 1912 proposed the idea that the opposing continents had once been united and drifted apart. Most of the geologist and physicists had contempt for this idea for decades before it was considered seriously.

As geochemical data from ancient and modern volcanoes and their sources and meteorites accumulated, along with more sophisticated interpretations of the ever increasing geophysical data (from studies of the passage of earthquake waves through the deeper zones of the Earth, for example) opinions changed. Gophysicisists realized that their fundamental objections to large scale movements of the Earths crust over a molten deeper zone were no more valid. Crucial evidence in the 1960s of changes in the Earths magnetic field throughout geological time, especially from the studies of the ocean floors, made the hypothesis of the crustal plates being moved by convection currents on an underlying molten zone tenable. The Plate Tectonic Theory, emphasizing that continental and oceanic areas and their relationship with each other and with Earths climatic belts have continually changed throughout geological time (and will continue to do so) is now accepted by all geological scientists.