[i]  “The land masses continually crack, crumble and drift.”

“Plate tectonics (from Greek τέκτων, tektōn “builder” or “mason”) is a theory of geology that has been developed to explain the observed evidence for large scale motions of the Earth’s lithosphere. The theory encompassed and superseded the older theory of continental drift from the first half of the 20th century and the concept of seafloor spreading developed during the 1960s.

The outermost part of the Earth’s interior is made up of two layers: above is the lithosphere, comprising the crust and the rigid uppermost part of the mantle. Below the lithosphere lies the asthenosphere. Although solid, the asthenosphere has relatively low viscosity and shear strength and can flow like a liquid on geological time scales. The deeper mantle below the asthenosphere is more rigid again. This is, however, not because of cooler temperatures but due to high pressure.

The lithosphere is broken up into what are called tectonic plates — in the case of Earth, there are seven major and many minor plates. The lithospheric plates ride on the asthenosphere. These plates move in relation to one another at one of three types of plate boundaries: convergent or collision boundaries, divergent or spreading boundaries, and transform boundaries. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation occur along plate boundaries. The lateral movement of the plates is typically at speeds of 5 – 10 centimeters / yr.”

— Reference:  Wikipedia.org

[ii] “ The magnetic poles of the planet shift radically about once every 20,000 years”.

“The pole shift theory is a hypothesis that the axis of rotation of a planet has not always been at its present-day locations or that the axis will not persist there; in other words, that its physical poles had been or will be shifted. Pole shift theory is almost always discussed in the context of Earth, but other solar system bodies may have experienced axial reorientation during their existences.

Pole shift theories are not to be confused with plate tectonics, the well-accepted geological theory that the Earth’s surface consists of solid plates which shift over a fluid asthenosphere; nor with continental drift, the corollary to plate tectonics which maintains that locations of the continents have moved slowly over the face of the earth, resulting in the gradual emerging and breakup of continents and oceans over hundreds of millions of years.

Pole shift theories are also not to be confused with Geomagnetic reversal, the periodic reversal of the earth’s magnetic field (effectively switching the north and south magnetic poles). Geomagnetic reversal has more acceptance in the scientific community than pole shift theories.”

— Reference:  Wikipedia.org

EDITOR’S NOTE:

A new Study will be published in the March issue of the Journal of Geology, excerpted below:

Every sixty million years, the biodiversity of our planet’s oceans mysteriously crashes. This strange boom and bust cycle goes back 500 million years, and we now might know why: rising continents make the oceans too shallow for species to survive.

The key to this mystery, according to new research led by University of Kansas physicist Adrian Melott, is the isotope strontium-87. This is one of four stable isotopes of the element strontium, although its less common (7.0%) than strontium-86 (9.86%) and much, much less abundant than strontium-88 (82.58%). The researchers, which also included paleontologist Richard Bambach and earth scientists Kenni D. Petersen and John M. McArthur, found that the concentration of Sr-87 relative to Sr-86 in marine fossils seems to increase every 60 million years, in lockstep with the periodic wave of extinction.

According to Melott, one way to produce Sr-87 is through the radioactive decay of the element rubidium. We know that rubidium is common in the igneous rocks of the continental crust, so the spikes in Sr-87 imply that something was happening to those igneous rocks every 60 million years. If these rubidium-rich rocks underwent an unusual erosion event, lots of Sr-87 would be released and dumped into the ocean, and that’s what the researchers are seeing in the marine fossils.

The question then is what could be causing such massive erosion. Melott suspects the continents were actually undergoing a process known as tectonic uplift, which describes a number of different possible geological processes in which the elevation of a region increases. Melott explains how this process might play out:

“Continental uplift increases erosion in several ways. First, it pushes the continental basement rocks containing rubidium up to where they are exposed to erosive forces. Uplift also creates highlands and mountains where glaciers and freeze-thaw cycles erode rock. The steep slopes cause faster water flow in streams and sheet-wash from rains, which strips off the soil and exposes bedrock. Uplift also elevates the deeper-seated igneous rocks where the Sr-87 is sequestered, permitting it to be exposed, eroded, and put into the ocean. What we’re seeing could be evidence of a ‘pulse of the earth’ phenomenon. There are some theoretical works which suggest that convection of mantle plumes, rather like a lava lamp, should be coordinated in periodic waves.”