Khudadad's Knols

Geological food for thoughts
1- Big fives (Mass extinctions)

Earth hostory has seen the five large mass extinctions the most famous of them is the boundary between Cretaceous and tertiary period known as K-T boundary happened 65 million years ago in which Dinosaurs has wiped out. There are many theories about causes of mass extanctions. Meteroite impacts and global warmings and plate tectonics are three most reasonable causes but still there is no consensus. For us studying mass extinction is very important as it is feared the the current global warming will lead to modern day ice age and mass extinction.

2- Cambrian explosion a challenge for both geologists and biologists

Cambrian explosion is also known as a biological big bang is an amazing event in geological record which indicate abrupt appearances of complex organisms in very short time span. It has renewed the now old debate of creationist and evolutionists. Though it is not as sudden as thought as well as new evidences and discoveries still awaited but it has really troubled geologists and biologists to explain the sudden change. One of the big reason is the energy that organisms got from free oxygen enabled them to modify and adopt new changes with higher costs of energy but it is not enough.




3- Green revolution and Geology

a- Using a concept of sedimentology to help reduce global warming. The most basic and important lesson that geology teach us is lithification or diagenesis. Lithification is provide a solution to mass waste that modern men use and pollute soil, water and air. Paper (cellulose), plastics (carbon chain), glasses (Silicon and oxygen chain) and metals all good cement to lithify the sediments. If we lithify the sediments (silt, mud, sand and gravel) by using these cements we can make different building materials especially blocks so we can convert our garbage easily into useful structures. It is a technology that sedimentology offer to us.
b- Using porosity for making redischarge of rain water especially in areas where drought is a serious problem and people of area is threatened by environment of becoming envrironmental migrants.

4- How generalization of data led to discovery of continental drift then to sea floor spreading and ultimately to Plate tectonic theory.

It is a tradition in scientific investigations and research to specify or concentrate on certain details but this approach besides being productive and making researches easy has serious drawbacks. One of the drawbacks is missing key links necessary for developing coherent theories like plate tectonics.

It was not a single evidence that led to theory of plate tectonics. Fossil records, ice ages, sedimentary deposits, volcanism both on continents and in oceans, geography, magnetism, earth quacks, isostasy, etc all these phenomenon collectively created a big picture to understand plate tectonics. Hence beside specification, generalization of geological data is necessary to solve problems like evolution, mass extinctions and global warming.