Geology Bites: An Earth and Planetary Science Podcast

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Alec Brenner on When Tectonic Plates First Moved

A key development in the history of the early Earth is the formation of lithospheric plates that move independently of one another. In this episode, Brenner describes how he used paleomagnetic methods to detect relative motion between two ancient cratons, the East Pilbara and the Kaapvaal, 3.5 billion years ago. This is a full billion years earlier than any previous such detection, and it enables us to narrow down the kind of tectonics operating in the Paleoarchean. Of the candidate regimes, episodic subduction models fit his data best. Brenner is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Earth & Planetary Science at Yale University. Illustrations and full transcript: https://geologybites.com/alec-brenner

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  Tony Watts on the Mechanics of Tectonic Plates

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  Torgeir Andersen on Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism

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  Brian Wernicke on Lithospheric Extension and the Basin and Range Province

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  Bernhard Steinberger on Whether Hotspots Are Fixed

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  Sonia Tikoo on the Moon's Magnetic Field

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  Steve Brusatte on the Dinosaurs That Survived the Asteroid

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  Steve Jacobsen on Materials in Extreme Environments

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  Esther Sumner on Turbidity Currents

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  Hal Levison on the Mission to Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids

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  Sara Pruss on the First Reef Builders

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  Michael Manga on Wet Eruptions

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  Carina Hoorn on the Evolution of the Amazon Basin

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  Anat Shahar on What Makes a Planet Habitable

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  Keith Klepeis on How Plutons Form

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  Tom Herring on High-Precision Geodesy