Price N.J. Major Impacts and Plate Tectonics: A Model for the Phanerzoic Evolution of the Earth's Lithosphere

Routledge, CRC Press, 2001, 346 pages, ISBN: 0415238994 9780415238991This book evaluates the mechanisms that give rise to tectonic plate movements and presents evidence to show that major impacts on earth have caused significant and dramatic changes in their track. Author challenges the fundamentals of the theory on which geoscience has rested for the past 25 years, and evaluates the mechanisms that give rise to plate movements.The book also demonstrates that such major impact events often coincide with the development of continental flood basalts and oceanic plateau basalts and frequently coincide with major stratigraphic stage boundaries and toxicity, which in turn can be associated with periods of extinction. It concludes that geological history comprises periods of relatively orderly, evolutionary change in Earth and life-forms punctuated by catastrophic changes induced by major impacts that reset the evolutionary clock.Earth and the solar system.Plate tectonics.
The structure and dynamics of the Earth.
Factors determining plate motion.
Tectonic evolution ofterrestial planets.
Sources of impact bodies.
Characteristics, stresses in, and strength of oceanic lithosphere.Characteristics of oceanic lithosphere.
Response of lithosphere to loading.
Orientation of horizontal stresses.
The world stress map (WSM).
Rock mechanics data and the strength of the lithosphere.
Failure limits in oceanic lithosphere.
Magnitude of interplate stresses.
Conclusions.
Assessment of mechanisms that cause plate movements.Mechanisms driving and resisting plate motions.
Iceland, roll-over structures and gravity-glide.
Intraplate structures in oceanic lithospheres.
Development of a subduction zone.
Discussion and conclusions.
Hotspots, plumes and lithospheric thinning.Large igneous provinces.
Hotspots and their mechanism of emplacement.
Continental flood basalts and the break-up of continents.
Plumes and the splitting of continents.
Conclusions.
Geometries and mechanisms of impact structures.The recognition of impact structures.
Man-made craters.
Moon v. Earth.
Stresses and reaction of target rock as the result of impacts.
Summary, conclusions and inference.
Impacts and plate motion.The Atlas system.
Tracks of certain impacts, continental flood basalts and an oceanic plateau basalt.
Oceanic basalts—the Ontong-Java event.
Comment.
Causal mechanism.
Cratering and the development of oceanic and continental basalts.
The splitting of continents.
Summary and conclusion.
Arcuate subduction features.'Conventional' development of arcuate oceanic trenches.
Mid-ocean trenches which form arcs of a circle.
The Scotia arc.
The Caribbean (or Lesser Antilles) Arc.
The Banda Arc.
The Amirante Arc.
The Mariana Trench.
Impact size and minor subduction arcs.
Impact of comet-bodies in deep ocean.
Comment on the K/T boundary events.
Summary and conclusions.
Periodicity, regional tracks, impact control and future risks.Periodicity and relationship of cyclical events.
More tracks.
Peridocity and impact-flux changes in the Phanerozoic.
Impacts, a hazard to humanity.
Synopsis.