GES 111 - Principles of Geology

TOPICS COVERED IN ASSIGNED READINGS:

Chapter 1, Tarbuck & Lutgens:

• Catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and geologic time: the birth of modern geology
• Relative dating and the geologic time scale
• Introduction to the scientific method; hypotheses and theories
• The earth system: hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, and the solid earth
• continents and oceans
• differentiation of terrain types within continents and oceans
• Origin of the solar system and the nebular hypothesis
• Differentiation of the earth into layers: crust, mantle, inner and outer core
• Difference between lithosphere and asthenosphere
• Plate tectonics as a unifying theory; divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries
• The rock cycle and its connection with plate tectonics; igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock

    Big ideas and scientific controversies in geology:

• The concept of "deep" time and the origins of modern geology:
• The Geological time scale
• James Hutton and uniformitarianism vs. catastrophism
• Virtual field trip to Siccar Point
• And yet one more
• A paper in the Journal of Geoscience Education on Hutton's understanding of unconformities
  

 
• Modern evidence for a catastrophic past:

• "Blast from the Past" - Smithsonian exhibit on asteroid impact and extinctions
• the Chicxulub crater and the extinction of the dinosaurs
• Chicxulub crater and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary
• comet Shoemaker-Levy's impact on Jupiter
• the Chesapeake Bay bolide
• the Channeled Scablands and the Missoula floods
• another article on the Missoula floods
  
• J. Harlan Bretz and the discovery of the Missoula floods
• the evidence for Martian floods (1) and (2)