Major Impacts and Plate Tectonics: A Model for the Phanerzoic Evolution of the Earth’s Lithosphere

This book presents a breakthrough in our understanding of plate tectonics. The author looks at the importance of the impacts on the earth of objects from space and presents evidence showing that these impacts can cause significant changes that cannot be explained by current theories of plate tectonics. He demonstrates that major impacts often coincide with the development of continental flood and oceanic plateau basalts and with developments that can be associated with periods of extinction. He concludes that geological history comprises periods of relatively orderly, evolutionary change punctuated by catastrophic changes induced by major impacts that reset the evolutionary clock.