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- The cooling of the earth's mantle, and the associated impact on the rotational rate of the earth, the size of the earth, the cracking of the crust, the movement of tectonic plates, and the thickness of the crust.
- The impact of “hot spots' in the mantle on surface geology, specifically as shown by volcanic island chains like the Hawaiian Islands and geologically active areas like the Snake River Plain volcanic flows and Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
- Tectonic Plate spreading centers, with a well studied modern surface geologic example being Iceland in the North Atlantic.
- Magnetic Pole reversals and the accompanying recorded orientation of magnetic stripes, which parallel spreading centers because the recorded magnetic orientation was set as new volcanic rocks were generated and cooled after leaving these plate tectonic spreading centers. Related biological observations are how significant changes in life on earth tie to the few hundred to few thousand years periods when these magnetic pole reversals have occurred.3.148 Scientists relate these mutations to the loss of magnetic field protection from cosmic radiation while the magnetic poles flip.
- Subduction Zones, and how sedimentary rocks are cooked under great pressure and how the resulting metamorphic rocks are eventually recycled by being uncovered by erosion or through volcanoes like those forming the Sierra Nevada mountains in Western Nevada.
- Milankovich Cycles and the collective effect of changes in the Earth's movement in space upon climate,3.149 including precession (one full cycle completed very 26,000 years), obliquity, eccentricity, solar forcing, stages of glaciation, and the 100,000 year ice age cycles which have occurred over the last few million years (discussed in more detail in Chapter IX, Section 3).
- Ice Ages and their impact on lowering global sea level hundreds of feet, which lowers the erosion baseline, enhances erosion and speeds up the building of the sedimentary rock record. At low sea levels, depositional patterns create a Lowstand Systems Tract. At the opposite end of the eustatic cycle (sea level cycle), when the sea level reaches a maximum height, depositional patterns create a Highstand Systems Tract.
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paradoxes