The Cyclical Opening and Closing of Ocean Basins

No rock is accidental. No idea in geology is more profound than this; it runs from the center to
the whole of geology and influences every subdiscipline of the field. Genuine understanding of
the science of geology begins with one's ability to understand and explain why no rock is
accidental.

Tectonics is concerned with deformation in the earth and the forces which produce
deformation. Plate tectonics is the theory that the earth's lithosphere (outer rigid shell) is
composed of several dozen "plates", or pieces, which float on a ductile mantle, like slabs of ice
on a pond. In plate tectonic theory earth history, at its simplest, is one of plates rifting into pieces
diverging apart and new ocean basins being born, followed by motion reversal, convergence
back together, plate collision, and mountain building. This cycle of opening and closing ocean
basins is the Wilson Cycle.
Plate tectonics is one of the great unifying theories in geology. Virtually every part of the
earth's crust, and every kind of rock and every kind of geology can be related to the plate tectonic
conditions which existed at the time they formed. Nothing in geology makes sense except in
terms of plate tectonic theory.
One of the most important messages of modern understanding of plate tectonics and the
Wilson cycle is that beginning with a parent igneous rock of mafic/ultramafic composition all the
other rocks now on the earth can be generated. The most important message of the plate tectonic
rock cycle is that each and every rock forms only under a specific set of tectonic conditions.

Most geologic activity occurs at the three kinds of plate boundaries:

(1) divergent boundaries where plates are moving apart and new crust is being created,

(2) convergent boundaries where plates are moving together and crust is being destroyed, and

(3) transform boundaries where plates slide past one another.

Very interesting geology occurs along transform boundaries, as all the faulting along the San
Andreas fault system in California attests to, but this model does not include transform
boundaries.

We have two models summarizing earth evolutionary processes.

(1) The Wilson Cycle, explored below, and . . .

(2) The Tectonic Rock Cycle, a more theoretically abstact model of how rocks and the earth
evolve.
 The following Wilson Cycle model follows the series of cross sections constituting the
Wilson cycle. It begins with a hypothetical geologically (tectonically) quiet continent. The model
is divided into nine stages, but the stages are arbitrary and do not exist naturally. The earth is an
ongoing series of processes so it is much more important to understand the processes, how they
are related, and how one process leads naturally to the next process.
Also note that this Wilson Cycle is a simple, ideal model. The earth has many continents,
which migrate across its spherical surface in very complex ways. Just about any scenario you can
think of, and any exception you can imagine is quite possible - and has probably happened
during some point in the earth's history.