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Geological and Geophysical Evidence Relating to Continental Growth and Dynamics and the Hydrosphere in Precambrian Times: a Review and Analysis

  • Chapter
Tidal Friction and the Earth’s Rotation

Abstract

A very large number of geological and geophysical observations have been forthcoming in recent years from the Precambrian areas of the globe. Although these studies are unevenly distributed and come largely from the cratonic regions of Laurentia (the Canadian Shield, Greenland, and NW Scotland), southern Africa, and western Australia, they have shed considerable light on the early history of the Earth. They provide a sound basis for the tectonic subdivision of Precambrian times into the Archaean (> ca. 2700 m.y.) and Proterozoic (2700–600 m.y.) eras and show for example that a hydrosphere and shallow seas have existed on the Earth since 3800 m.y. while the history of the Earth-Moon system extends back to at least 3000 m.y. We can, however, only surmise as to the nature of the oceanic (simatic) components of the lithosphere in pre-Palaeozoic times because, with a few possible exceptions, this has been entirely destroyed. According to the concepts of the New Global Tectonics (Isacks et al. , 1968) we understand that this oceanic component is generated at the mid-ocean ridges and subducted below the continental lithosphere by the action of a mobile circulating asthenosphere (Hess, 1962; Dietz, 1961). The nature of the ocean crust, which must have covered at least 70 % of the globe in post-Archaean times (< 2500 m.y.), is therefore a matter of speculation only.

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  1. Sub-Department of Geophysics, University of Liverpool, Oxford Street, P.O. Box 147, Liverpool, L69 3BX, England

    J. D. A. Piper

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  1. J. D. A. Piper
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  1. Observatorium Hoher List, Universitätssternwarte Bonn, 5568, Daun/Eifel, Germany

    Peter Brosche

  2. Institut für Meereskunde, Universität Hamburg, Heimhuder Straße 71, 2000, Hamburg 13, Germany

    Jürgen Sündermann

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© 1978 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Piper, J.D.A. (1978). Geological and Geophysical Evidence Relating to Continental Growth and Dynamics and the Hydrosphere in Precambrian Times: a Review and Analysis. In: Brosche, P., Sündermann, J. (eds) Tidal Friction and the Earth’s Rotation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67097-8_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67097-8_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-09046-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-67097-8

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