Earth History Research and News

Palaeocurrent data provide fascinating insights into sediment dispersal patterns in the geological past – and some remarkable trends are being revealed by ongoing analysis of a huge database of measurements from across the North American continent. Arthur Chadwick of Southwestern Adventist University has compiled data from over half a million measured palaeocurrent vectors at fifteen thousand locations from the Phanerozoic of North America. His work verifies the stable southwesterly pattern of palaeocurrents across the continent documented by earlier workers and demonstrates its persistence with some variation throughout the Palaeozoic. In the Mesozoic the currents show increasing variability and shift from predominantly westerly to predominantly easterly. By the middle of the Cenozoic there is no discernible continent-wide palaeocurrent pattern, and sedimentation seems to be more basinal. These patterns reflect major changes in global current trends – and any successful model of Earth history needs to be able to account for them.

For more information see:
‘Megatrends in North American paleocurrents’
http://origins.swau.edu/papers/global/paleocurrents/default.html

‘Lithologic, paleogeographic, and paleocurrent maps of the world’
http://geology.swau.edu/paleocurrents_1.html