Bending thoughts about Hawaiian chain part of SERC Web Resource Collection

This article, published in Geotimes in 2003, summarizes controversial results from Ocean Drilling Program Leg 197 suggesting that the bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount/island chain may be the ...

Geologic History of the San Andreas Fault System part of SERC Web Resource Collection

This page from the USGS resource This Dynamic Earth (online edition) describes the evolution of the western coast of North America. A series of block diagrams shows how the subduction zone along the ...

The Farallon Plate part of SERC Web Resource Collection

In this animation from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, the Farallon Plate sinks beneath North American Plate and scrapes along bottom of continent for 1,500 kilometers before sinking again.

Late Jurassic Tectonics and Paleogeography (145 Ma) part of SERC Web Resource Collection

These side-by-side images from Northern Arizona University show tectonic conditions of Western margin of North America alongside a paleotopography map.

Plate Tectonics and the Evolution of Central America and the Caribbean part of SERC Web Resource Collection

A series of illustrations with explanatory text from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay showing the tectonic evolution of Central America and the Caribbean region from 170 Ma to present.

Cenozoic to Recent plate configurations in the Pacific Basin: Ridge subduction and slab window magmatism in western North America part of SERC Web Resource Collection

These are figures show in an article from Geosphere by Madsen et al. Several of the figures show hypothetical reconstructions of the tectonic evolution in the area of the plate margin on the west ...

Tectonic Evolution of Western North America part of SERC Web Resource Collection

This narrative set of cartoons illustrate a hypothesized sequence of events in Western North America's recent geologic history beginning at 30 Ma. Each cartoon is accompanied by explanatory text to ...

Evolution of the Farallon subduction from the Late Cretaceous to the Early Tertiary part of SERC Web Resource Collection

Figure 3 from 'Reconstructing Farallon Plate Subduction Beneath North America Back to the Late Cretaceous' by Liu et al, published in Science [2008, 322(5903), 934]. This figure shows the map view ...

Mantle Convection part of SERC Web Resource Collection

This page discusses thermal convection as it applies to the Earth's mantle and includes three QuickTime movies for three different cases of convection: heating from below, heating from within, and a ...

Thermal Structure from Models of Mantle Convection with Surface Plates, Temperature-dependent and Radially Stratified Viscosity part of SERC Web Resource Collection

This animation shows the evolution of thermal structure within the mantle over a period of about 4 transit times (equivalent to ~200 Ma). The scale of thermal structure is controlled by surface ...