Paleomagnetic dating method
29-Nov-2020 07:41
Paleomagnetism (or palaeomagnetism in the United Kingdom) is the study of the record of the Earth's magnetic field in rocks, sediment, or archeological materials.Certain minerals in rocks lock-in a record of the direction and intensity of the magnetic field when they form.This provided the first clear geophysical evidence for continental drift.
Paleomagnetism continues to extend the history of plate tectonics back in time and are applied to the movement of continental fragments, or terranes.Japanese geophysicist Motonori Matuyama showed that the Earth's magnetic field reversed in the mid-Quaternary, a reversal now known as the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. Alfred Wegener first proposed in 1915 that continents had once been joined together and had since moved apart.