Relative Dating

 The process of determining whether an event or

object is older or younger than other events or
objects.

Superposition
 Principle that states that younger rocks lie above
older rocks, if the layers have not been disturbed.

Disturbing Forces
 Not all rock sequences are arranged with the
oldest layers on the bottom and the youngest
layers on top.

The Geologic Column

 an ideal sequence of rock layers that contains all
the known fossils and rock formations on Earth,
arranged from oldest to youngest.

Four ways that rock layers may become disturbed.

1. A fault
 break in the Earth’s crust along which blocks of
the crust slide relative to one another.
2. An intrusion
 molten rock from the Earth’s interior that squeezes
into existing rock and cools.
 3. Folding
 occurs when rock layers bend and buckle from
Earth’s internal forces.
4. Tilting
 occurs when internal forces in the Earth slant rock
layers.
Missing Evidence
 Sometimes, layers of rock are missing, creating a
gap in the geologic record.
Unconformity
 break in the geologic record created when rock
layers are eroded or when sediment is not
deposited for a long period of time.

Types of Unconformities
 Disconformities exist where part of a sequence of
parallel rock layers is missing.
 Nonconformities
 exist where sedimentary rock layers lie on top of
an eroded surface of nonlayered igneous or
metamorphic rock.
 Angular Unconformities
 exist between horizontal rock layers and rock
layers that are tilted or folded.
Absolute dating

 any method of measuring the age of an event or object

in years.
Radioactive Decay
 Isotopes
 atoms of the same element that have the same
number of protons but different numbers of
neutrons.
 Other isotopes are unstable.
 Scientists call unstable isotopes radioactive.
 Radioactive decay
 Radioactive isotopes tend to break down into
stable isotopes of the same or other elements.
Parent isotope
 The unstable radioactive isotope.
Daughter isotope
 The stable isotope produced by the radioactive
decay of the parent isotope.
Radiometric dating
 Determining the absolute age of a sample, based
on the ratio of parent material to daughter
material.
  Half-life
 the time needed for half of a sample of a
radioactive substance to undergo radioactive
decay.
 After every half-life, the amount of parent material
decrease by one-half.
There are four radiometric-dating techniques.
1. Potassium-Argon Method
 Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years,
and it decays leaving a daughter material of argon.
 This method is used mainly to date rocks older
than 100,000 years.
2. Uranium-Lead Method
 Uranium-238 is a radioactive isotope with a half-
life of 4.5 billion years. Uranium-238 decays in a
series of steps to lead-206.
 The uranium-lead method can be used to date
rocks more than 10 million years old.
3. Rubidium-Strontium Method
 The unstable parent isotope rubidium-87 forms a
stable daughter isotope strontium-87.
 The half-life of rubidium-87 is 49 billion years
 This method is used for rocks older than 10
million years.
4. Carbon-14 Method
 Carbon is normally found in three forms, the stable
isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-13, and the
radioactive isotope carbon-14.
 Living plants and animals contain a constant ratio
of carbon-14 to carbon-12.
 Once a plant or animal dies, no new carbon
is taken in.
 The amount of carbon-14 begins to decrease
as the plant or animal decays.
 The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years.
 The carbon-14 method of radiometric dating
is used mainly for dating things that lived
within the last 50,000 years.
 • Gradation
– Erosion: Removal of material
– Deposition: Filling of depressions
– Transportation of materials
• Gradational agents
– Water, wind, ice
– All agents are powered by solar radiation and
gravity
Weathering
• Material decomposed to prepare for easy transportation

Types of weathering
Physical/Mechanical
• Disintegrates rock without altering chemical
composition.
Chemical
• Rocks decay by a variety of chemical
reactions.
• Rounded rocks- chemical
• Jagged angular rocks- physical
Physical Weathering
• Frost wedging
– Water freezes in cracks of rocks. When water
freezes it expands. Predominately occurs above
the tree line. Figure 15.11 shows talus cones
• Salt wedging
– Formation of crystals. Predominately occurs on
rocky marine coasts
• Exfoliation
– Peeling off of concentric layers. Half Dome in
Yosemite Valley
Contributors to Physical Weathering
• Joints and fractures in the rock
• Plants
• Animals
• Human activities

Chemical Weathering
• Minerals dissolved in water are said to be in solution.
• Mineral salts immediately soluble in water are called
evaporites. They precipitate when the water becomes
saturated with them.
 • Oxidation- Chemical union of oxygen with another
substance. Examples- limestone turns yellow or
formation of red from iron oxide.
• Hydrolysis- Chemical union of water with another
substance.

Rapid Mass Movement

• Rapid Mass Movement is visible and dramatic.
• Slump- Curved backward rotation. Frequent in clay
rich California.
• MudFlow- More fluid than earth flow. Associated with
fires and then torrential rains or volcanoes where the
mudflow is called a lahar.
• Landslide-Mass of material that moves as a unit.
Carries regolith and masses of bedrock. Conditions:
Steep mountains and heavy rain or earthquakes.
• Rockfall-Individual rock or several rocks that fall down
slope. Rock fragments can be small or large.

Slow Mass Movement

• Creep
• Solifluction
– Thawed area of permafrost. What biome?
– Unfrozen part of the soil becomes watersoaked
creating a soggy mass that sags slowly downslope
in response of gravity.
WARPING
• Large portions of the Earth’s crust are subjected to
uplift or depression.
• Uplift possibly due to tectonic as well as erosion
processes.
• Depression usually due to glacial weight added to crust
– Isostasy: rebound of the Earth’s crust as glacial
weight is removed through melting and global
warming
FORCES THAT SHAPE THE EARTH’S SURFACE
• There are three main types of forces of pressure that
work to shape (and re-shape) the Earth’s surface:
– Compression forces (‘squeezing’)
– Extension (or tension) forces (‘stretching’)
– Shearing forces (‘ripping’)

COMPRESSION FORCES: FOLDS

• Folding
– A fold is formed by the bending or buckling of rock
layers, as a result of great force and pressure over
extremely long periods of geologic time
– There are two primary types of folding:
– Synclines and Anticlines
 • Syncline: Rock layers bend downward in the folding
process to form a trough-like physical feature called a
syncline. This physical feature often shows itself in the
form of valleys and lakes.
• Anticline: Rock layers buckle upward during folding to
form an arch-like structure called an anticline. This
physical features often shows itself in the form of
mountains or ridges.

Folded Mountains form as the edges of two adjacent

rock layers are pushed together
• The layers buckle like a wrinkled rug
• Mountains form from multiple parallel synclines
and anticlines

FAULTING – COMPRESSION, EXTENSION AND

SHEARING FORCES
• When enormous stresses build and push large intact
rock masses beyond their yield limit, faulting of the
surface is likely to occur.
• A fault is a fracture in the rock layers along which
movement occurs
• Movement is the displacement of once connected
blocks of rock along a fault plane. Displacement can
occur in any direction with the broken blocks moving
along the fault in opposite directions from each other.
Measuring Displacement along a Fault
• Some faults have vertical displacement, while others
have horizontal displacement
• The measure of displacement is referred to as either
“dip-slip” or “strike-slip”.
– Strike: The compass direction of a line of strata
– Dip: The angle in degrees between a horizontal
surface and an inclined surface – measured as
perpendicular to strike

Faults are identified by their patterns of displacement:

– Vertical (dip slip)
• The movement is along the line of the dip
– Horizontal (strike slip)
• The movement is along the line of the strike

TOPOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF DIP SLIP FAULTS

• Fault scarp: steep cliff that represents edge of
vertically displaced rock
– Can be 100s of meters in height
– Can extend 100s of kilometers in straight lines
– Sharp rise in terrain and steep slopes
NORMAL FAULTS: DIP SLIP FAULTS
• Normal faults are the result of tensional (or extensional)
forces acting to pull apart the surface.
• The hanging wall drops relative to the footwall.
• Normal faults can occur across vast areas due to
lithospheric stretching.
– Basin and Range in Western USA

REVERSE FAULT – DIP SLIP

• Reverse faults are the result of compression forces
• The footwall drops relative to the hanging wall

BLIND REVERSE THRUST FAULT

• A blind reverse thrust fault does not extend to the
surface – we only know of their existence because of
earthquakes and surface deformation
• Hanging wall lifts up and over footwall

TRANSFORM FAULTS: SHEARING FORCES

• Transform faults can be found at plate boundaries as
one plate slides horizontally past another.
– Strike-slip faults
 • Most transform faults are found on the ocean floor as
part of the active offset along divergent plate
boundaries.

TRANSFORM FAULTS: PLATE BOUNDARIES

• At plate boundaries, when two tectonic plates grind past
each other, there is usually no volcanism or mountain
building occurring.
• One of the largest transform faults in the world is the
San Andreas Fault
– Separating the North American Plate from the
Pacific Plate in southern California.

Features of San Andreas Fault

• Linearity: This fault exhibits an almost ‘straight line’ in
appearance on the Earth’s surface.
• Beheaded streams: Streams that cross the San
Andreas are displaced as the Pacific Plate slowly
moves along
• Sag Ponds: Groundwater, under pressure from the
two plates grinding together, is forced to the surface.
Plate Tectonics
• The Earth’s crust is divided into 12 major plates which
are moved in various directions.
• This plate motion causes them to collide, pull apart, or
scrape against each other.
• Each type of interaction causes a characteristic set of
Earth structures or “tectonic” features.
• The word, tectonic, refers to the deformation of the
crust as a consequence of plate interaction.
What are tectonic plates made of?
Plates are made of rigid lithosphere- – formed of the crust
and the extreme upper mantle.
What lies beneath the tectonic plates?
• Below the lithosphere (which makes up the tectonic
plates) is the as thenosphere
• . The asthenosphere, beneath the lithosphere, is part of
the upper mantle and is so hot that it is 1 – 5% liquid
(I.e. 95 – 99% solid). This liquid, usually at the junctions
of the crystals, allow it to flow – which is why ‘astheno’
means weak