Physical geology

Introduction
Pages 1-6
Mark J. Crawford,.
 Physical geology

• is the study of the earth's rocks,

minerals, and soils and how they have
formed through time.
• Internal processes such as plate tectonics and
mountain-building have formed these rocks and
brought them to the earth's surface . Internal
heat and energy are released also through
volcanic eruptions.

• External processes such as Glaciation,

running water, weathering, and erosion have
formed the landscapes we see today.
 Historical Notes
• About 2300 years ago, the Greeks, led by
the philosopher Aristotle were among the
first to try to understand the earth.

• During the 1600s and 1700s, scientists

believed the earth had been produced by
gigantic, sudden, catastrophic events that
built mountains, canyons, and oceans.
 James Hutton Father of geology
• uniformitarianism.
• Presence is the key to the past

• law of superposition
In undeforme sequence of sedimentary rocks, each layer
is younger than the ones below it and older than those
above it .

• law of faunal succession

Fossils in these rocks occur in the same kind of order,
and changes in fossil content represent changes in time
 The Earth's Origin
• Nebular hypothesis,
• The planets and moons in the solar system, including Earth, formed from a
huge cloud of mostly hydrogen and helium.

• Contraction, rotation, and dropping temperatures resulted in the formation

of small particles, the first being nickel and iron.

• These began to stick together, and after tens of millions of years of

condensation and accretion, the earth was formed about 5 billion years
ago.

• Although the earth has been cooling ever since and has formed a hard outer
crust, part of the interior is still hot and molten
 The Earth's Structure
• The earth can be divided into four concentric zones
• inner core
• outer core
• mantle
• crust
Continental crust is
thicker than oceanic
crust.

The solid lithosphere

is composed of the crust
and the upper part of the
mantle .

The softer, more flexible

part of the mantle
underneath the
lithosphere is the
asthenosphere
(Figure 2).
 Theory of Plate Tectonics
• Continental Drift Hypothesis
– Originally proposed (early 20th cent.) to
explain the “fit of continents”, matching
rock types and fossils.
– Insufficient evidence found for driving
force; hypothesis initially rejected

Plate Tectonics Theory

– Included new understanding of the
seafloor and explanation of driving force
– Describes lithosphere as being broken into
plates that are in motion
– Explains origin and distribution of
volcanoes, fault zones and mountain belts
 Plate tectonics and mantel convections

As the earth cools, the intense heat being produced in the core creates convection
currents in the mantle that bring hot mantle material up toward the crust, and
colder mantle and crustal rocks sink downward. This heat engine drives plate
tectonics, or the movements of large segments of the earth's crust (plates) that are
separated along deep cracks called faults
 Tectonic Plates & Plate Boundaries

• Divergent boundaries
Plates move apart

• Transform boundaries
Plates slide past one another

• Convergent boundaries
Plates move toards each other
 Convergent boundaries
Plates move toward each other
Mountain belts and volcanoes
common
Oceanic plates may sink into
mantle along a subduction zone,
typically marked by a deep ocean
trench
India-Eurasia Collision
Divergent boundaries
Plates move aganist each other
Magma rises, cools and forms new
lithosphere
Typically expressed as mid-oceanic
ridges
 Tectonic Plate Boundaries

Transform boundaries
– Plates slide past one another
– Fault zones, earthquakes
mark plate boundaries
– San Andreas fault in California

San Andreas Fault,

Carizzo Plain, Central Ca
The deep midoceanic ridges
(divergent boundaries) by the outpouring of mantle lavas on
the ocean floor. These ridges are also called spreading centers.
 The Earth's Exterior
• Various external forces affect the earth's surface, such as
different climates and the amount of rainfall .

• Freezing, thawing, and running water all contribute to

weathering and erosion, processes that break rock down into
tiny particles .

These particles are then transported by water, ice, or wind as

sediment.

The processes of erosion reduce mountains to hills, create canyons,

valleys, and soils, and deposit huge amounts of sediments that
either become eroded again or are preserved and lithified into
sedimentary rock.
 Geologic Time
• Geoscientists have estimated the earth to be about 4.5 billion
years old. As the crust cooled, early geologic processes were
largely volcanic, building up continental crust and a primitive
atmosphere .

• Bacterial forms of life have been found in rocks that are

billions of years old . Complex oceanic organisms such as
trilobites began to appear only about 600 million years ago .

• From about 66 million to 245 million years ago, dinosaurs and

other reptiles flourished all over the world . In contrast,
human beings have existed in only about the last 3 million
years, less than a thousandth of the age of Earth .