Remember when everyone said plate tectonics was just a wild guess?

Back in my undergrad days at the University of Oregon, a lot of the old guard professors still treated plate tectonics like a neat story, not real science. They'd talk about it like it was a fad. I remember one guy, Dr. Hines, saying in a 2008 lecture, 'It's a pretty picture, but where's the proof under our feet?' I was pretty sure he was right. Then, on a field trip to the Cascades, we looked at these pillow basalts near McKenzie Pass. The guide pointed out how their shape and the way they were stacked only made sense if they'd formed underwater and been shoved up. That was the first real, physical thing I'd seen that the old 'land bridges and sinking continents' idea just couldn't explain. It clicked that the proof wasn't just in one spot, it was in the story the rocks themselves were telling. Anyone else have a moment where a rock formation just made a big theory finally make sense?

3 comments

3 Comments

nina_hall2mo ago

Wait, doesn't that feeling of it "clicking" just mean the textbook explanation finally made sense to you? I saw folded rocks in Utah once and yeah, they look like a rug. But that just made me wonder if we're too quick to see a story we already know. Maybe the rock is just... folded rock, and we're the ones needing it to be a lesson about time and force.

ryanscott3mo ago

My moment was seeing folded rock layers that looked like a rug someone bunched up.

nathan2893mo ago

Totally get what you mean about the rug bunched up. My buddy had a similar thing happen out west. He was hiking and found these huge, smooth rock folds that looked like giant ribbons of stone. He just stood there staring for like twenty minutes. Said it finally clicked how much force and time that must have taken. Makes you feel pretty small.